Mist & Whispers by C.M. Lucas Page B

hippies!’
    ‘Ignore him,’ Anya said to Harmony whilst shooting daggers at Michael. ‘We’ve actually come for something else, but we’ll try not to disturb you too much.’
    ‘That’s fine dear,’ Harmony said to Anya before turning to Michael. ‘Please keep him as far away as possible though. I sense his negative energy will interfere with the enlightening flow.’
    The family returned to their circle on the ground and back to their smiley meditation, except for Ocean. She tried her best to ignore his staring as they entered the ruins, feeling bad that he was stuck in a place where he didn’t belong. She knew that feeling all too well. No one had understood her passion for books at the home, or her need to be left alone with her own thoughts. She wasn’t into shopping, make up and yelping over posters of boy bands like the other girls there, and she cared little for the fickleness of their friendships.
    Each entrance to the church was guarded by two thick metal bars, but these didn’t take much to bypass.
    ‘So do we just wait for the sunrise then?’ Stephanie asked once they were all inside.
    ‘I guess so,’ Anya replied. She traced the edge of the ruins, feeling the stone crumble under her fingertips as she looked for a sign they were in the right place. She’d expected to find something, a symbol or a marking, a clue that indicated the Weaver’s presence in some way.
    ‘The sun should be rising in the next minute or so, guys,’ Tim called out.
    Perhaps the sun would shed some light on their situation.
    Sixty seconds passed slowly, and Anya found her attention drifting across the view of Somerset and then back at Ocean. He’d stopped staring and was now tapping his hand begrudgingly, his shoulders hunched in the rain. He scowled at his mother. Harmony, however, seemed completely unaware of her son’s distaste for their morning activities and was happily tapping away at her own hand, speaking in that airy tone that could put a person to sleep.
    ‘Even though in the past I have allowed myself to be tempted off the path of enlightenment...’ she chanted away.
    They certainly were a little out there. Looking away, Anya noticed something engraved into one of the bricks of the archway. She climbed up onto the top metal bar so as to get a closer look, and as she brushed away cob webs and blew away the dust, a single word was revealed.
    Weaver .
    ‘I found something!’ Anya cried out, and at once the others came to her side. ‘He was here! This is it!’ The others all huddled in the archway, marvelling at the simple word. ‘But, now what?’
    A warm glow swept the length of her cheek and she turned to see in the summer solstice. Brilliant orange burst from a gap in the clouds and over the hilltop, filling the ruins, and then what happened next was beyond anything she could have ever dreamed.
    Everything around her disappeared in the incandescence of the light. She felt a fizz in the pit of her stomach; a tingle like pins and needles, only stronger than she’d ever felt in her whole life. Then, her whole body seemed to implode toward the fizz, and for a split second she wondered whether she was dead, but twice as quickly as it happened, the feeling reversed, and Anya was in darkness.

 
    I N THE THIRTY seconds it took for Anya’s eyes to adjust to the darkness, a hundred questions ran through her mind. The first was answered as soon as she saw Stephanie, Tim and Michael standing next to her, just as they had been moments before in the archway of St. Michael’s church. The next question, however, was far from being answered.
    Looking around she realised the church had gone. The beautiful orange sunrise had been replaced by the black of night, and what had been a hilltop surrounded by farm land was now a forest of lifeless trees, their roots covered in dead leaves.
    The Four looked at each other, without any sort of explanation, stunned. They still had everything they were holding on to at the time