A secret shared
#5 of The World Beyond
Alrighty, here is the next chapter of the World beyond. I hope you enjoy it, and yes, I know it is short. I am trying to keep all the chapters of this story short as an experiment.
As always, comments are appreciated and requested.
Continued from 'A plan to heal...'
Grinning broadly, I strode through the brisk winter air, my spirits higher than ever, even though I was a bit nervous. It was Thursday morning, and my Chemistry laboratory had just let out, my last class for the week. And, it seemed to me that even nature was celebrating the day. While still hovering below freezing, the sky above was brilliant, pale powder-blue, the sunlight shining down on the frozen campus, making everything glitter as if it were encased in glass. Pausing on the edge of the athletic fields, a seemingly endless expanse of white snow, I reviewed the plan that Ronan and I had cooked up one last time. It was only a matter of hours now until it would go into effect, but it still depended on Scott bringing up my trips home. I had a few ideas of how to steer a conversation that way, but it was difficult for me to plan for that, since I didn't know how to do it without it seeming forced. Still smiling despite the odd thoughts flitting through my brain, I looked toward a group of students who were having an all out snowball war in the field, with at least a few dozen people participating. More people seemed to be joining the fight even as I watched, small white missiles pelting everywhere with reckless abandon. Judging from the ever growing number of participants, I knew I was just asking to be a target if I stood there for much longer, so I turned and continued my walk towards the dorm, keeping my ears open for sounds that the war was approaching.
As I walked, I pondered something that had come into my mind recently. It was an odd thing, but every one of my close friends among the furries had chosen a wolf as their fursona. One of my other friends, who was an accomplished artist, had once drawn a picture of all of our fursonas standing together, and he had entitled it The Wolfpack. We had all liked the name quite a bit and there was talk of forming a furry club by that name on campus. Already, some of us had taken to calling the others in the wolfpack, 'wolfbrothers'.
Just when I thought I had gotten all the way past the war zone and to the relative safety of the parking lot beyond, I suddenly felt a powerful instinct to duck. Dropping quickly into a crouch out of reflex alone, I saw a snowball easily the size of my head narrowly miss me, landing on the asphalt instead. Whirling around, I noticed someone I knew on the borders of the fight. It was Shane, another member of the Wolfpack and a fellow black belt, though from a different school than mine. He was already packing another snowball and my casual grin changed to the feral smile of a predator on the hunt. Dropping my backpack into the snow, I scooped up a handful of white powder, making it into a quick pack as I ran towards him. Scott wasn't out of class today until later anyway. Still grinning broadly, I hurled the snow ball as hard as I could, nailing Shane on the shoulder as he ducked. Laughing loudly, he returned fire, and this time, I didn't bother to duck, taking the hit on the back as I turned away from his line of fire. Smiling even more broadly, I began to pelt anyone near me in the fight with snow balls, hitting with almost all that I threw.
Fifteen minutes into the snowball fight, it had grown to gargantuan proportions. Hundreds of people had joined in the fray by now and it encompassed two whole soccer fields. I noticed little of this however, standing as I was towards the middle of the fight, hardly pausing at all as I defended myself from the army that surrounded me. People had identified me early as a major threat because of my accurate throwing, and soon many people teamed up against me, forcing me into the center of the field. But, seeing my plight, Shane and three more wolfbrothers had come to the center as well, standing side by side with me. Fortunately, despite all the people that faced us, the piled snow made for perfect cover. It was a little higher than our waists, a second snowfall having added to the first, and all we needed to do was duck down to be in cover.
Raising up suddenly from behind the snow that shielded me, I threw the snow ball I had packed, catching a hulking boy who probably played for the football team right in the face, then I ducked back down, scooping more snow into my palms and packing it. Cries and laughter filled the air around us and I looked over at Shane, his black hair coated in fine white powder and slush. Grinning like a madman, he rose and hurled his own snowball, resulting in a surprised laugh from across the way. Matching his grin perfectly, I rose to my feet, intending to throw my snowball at a target in the same group that Shane had targeted, but when I looked for them, I felt my arms go limp, my snowy munitions falling from my nerveless hand. There, where I had expected to find a human target, stood a white anthro wolf, and beside him, two more white furred anthros. One looked to be a fox, and the other some sort of feline... Before I could identify it, a hail of more than a dozen snowballs hit me from all directions, snow and slush getting everywhere. At once in control of myself, I ducked down into the natural snow fort once more, blinking icy water and snow out of my eyes.
"Hey, are you okay?" Shane asked, looking concerned. I nodded slowly, still shocked at what I had seen. Brushing snow from my hoodie with a free hand, Shane continued. "Geez man, keep your head down. You look like a snowman."
"I'm fine." I replied, more to myself than to him, trying to confirm what I had seen. Peeking up slowly from behind the edge of the snow crater, I looked out towards the place I had seen the furries, but they were nowhere to be seen. Crouching back down, I turned over, slouching against the edge on my back, trying to understand what I was seeing. That made twice now that I thought had seen the inhabitants of my paradise in the real world, or at least things that looked like them. The first time, I had concluded that I had nodded off in class, but this time, I had no such excuse. Shaking the troubled thoughts from my head, I picked up the snow ball I had dropped and rose suddenly back upward, my throw catching another jock in the head, making him duck back down within his own cover. Quickly packing a second shot, I peeked over my cover again, picking out a new target.
"I must be going nuts." I whispered as I rose up and threw my missile...
***
Scott lay on his bed, one arm thrown over his face, covering his eyes. The assignment he had been working on lay on the floor beside his bunk, about half finished. He had been working on it for the last half an hour, but it had been a constant struggle to work at all. He felt as though the weight of the world was pressing down on him. He had tried to ignore it, tried to lay it aside, but it had proven impossible. His personal issues were wearing on him, making it a supreme effort every day simply to get moving in the mornings. It also didn't help that it was winter, a time of year that had been depressive to him for as long as he could remember. When things got like this, it was hard for him to care about anything at all, but especially in classes he didn't particularly care for. The sound of the door opening snapped him out of his brooding thoughts and he spoke at last.
"Hey." He said, greeting his roommate without enthusiasm, not bothering to look in his direction. When his roomie returned the greeting, Scott lifted his arm at last to look at him. He sounded like he was forcing himself to be cheerful, something that he never did. Seeing that his friend was soaked and out of breath, he spoke again, concerned that something bad had happened to him. "What happened to you?"
"Snowball fight in the field." His friend replied with a smile, stripping off his soaked hoodie. "You shoulda been there. Our wolfbrothers and I fought side by side, against everybody at once. Held our own too." Seeing how happy he seemed, Scott smiled, sitting back up. At least someone he knew was happy.
"Maybe next time." Scott said, plucking the textbook from the floor. His friend's indomitable happiness was infectious, driving back his brooding at last. "You finish your chem. assignment yet?"
"I was just about too actually." He replied, hunting for his notebook in his backpack. "Want to work together?"
"Sure." Scott replied, and his friend grinned, turning on his stereo and sitting down across from him. At least he was having a good day it seemed. This too was an old ritual between the two of them. They had learned early on that they worked faster together than separately. Twenty minutes in, they had already finished most of the assignment and Scott finally asked a question that didn't relate to chemistry, his mood picking up at last. It was hard to be depressed with his roommate around actually, since he always seemed so damn cheerful. It made everyone around him want to be cheerful as well, even if they felt down. "So, you going home again this weekend?"
"Kinda." He replied, brow wrinkling as he tried to balance a complicated chemical reaction. "How many moles of acetate did you get for number 19?"
"Six." Scott replied, reaching for his calculator. "What do you mean, 'Kinda?'"
"Well, let me ask you something." His roomie replied, checking his answer against the question data once more. "Have you ever wished that you could go to another world, one that was absolutely perfect?"
"Sure I have." Scott said, surprised at the turn this conversation had taken. His roommate had always been a little weird, but this was odd even for him. Shaking off his feeling of disquiet, he refocused on his page. "What was the pH of the reagents in number 25?"
"11.2, I think." His friend replied, writing out the answer to the second to last question of the assignment. "What if I told you that I had a way to grant that wish?"
"Thanks." Scott said, starting work on the last problem as well. "I think I would say you were nuts."
"Maybe I am at that." He commented and Scott looked up at him in confusion, stopping mid-calculation.
"What are you trying to say?" he asked, looking at the odd boy curiously. His roommate didn't reply for a moment, finishing up his work. Then, in reply to Scott's question, he set his work aside, looking at Scott with unwavering seriousness, his eyebrows raised, his expression saying all he needed to. For a moment, Scott looked at him without comprehension, then suddenly he realized exactly what his friend was saying. Rolling his eyes, he went back to work, writing out the last of the calculation. "Uh huh."
"I wasn't kidding Scott." His friend continued and Scott looked up at him once more, surprised. "I do have a way of granting that wish."
"Oh, come on." Scott said, getting up from his bed and tossing his notebook on top of his backpack. "I know you have a quirky sense of humor, but this isn't even close to being funny."
"I am serious." he insisted, pulling open the closet door, revealing the full length mirror that hung there.
"So, let me get this straight," Scott began, suspecting that his roommate had finally snapped and taken a dive off the deep end. "You are telling me you are suddenly like a genie? You can take me to a world that is perfect?" When the blonde haired boy across from him nodded, Scott continued, turning away from him, now quite sure that he was nuts. Taking a step towards his desk, Scott purposely drove his bare foot down onto the end of an unused power cord. As he winced, he spoke once more, hoping that he would wake up from a nap or something to find that this whole conversation had been nothing more than a bad dream. When he still didn't wake up, he spoke, trying to jolt himself awake in any unobtrusive manner he could think of. "You are crazy."
"Scott." At the sound of his name, spoken in a commanding tone, Scott suddenly found himself unable to move, as if his muscles were all tensed at once. Now beginning to feel a little afraid, he struggled to move at all, to walk away, or to get some sort of weapon, though what he thought he could do against a black belt, he didn't know. And then, to his great surprise, he felt himself turning around, though that was about the last thing he wanted to do at the moment. He found his friend staring at him with an utterly serious look on his face, his eyes holding an odd depth to them. Suddenly, he got the disturbing impression that he was the one who had caused him to freeze, caused him to turn around. What he said next was another surprise. "I will show you all the proof you will need, but only if you want to know."
Now he was even more mixed up than before. When the blonde haired boy in front of him did nothing more than stare at him contemplatively, he began to examine this from every vantage point he could think of, attempting to make some sort of logical sense out of it. The first thing that he sorted into the 'understood' bin, was that his friend had never been one to make something like this up. Sure, he had an active imagination, but he had never let it carry over into real life. So, that fact left him with few possibilities. First, this could be a prank, though to the best of his knowledge, his friend had never pulled a prank on anyone. He felt it was dishonorable, and his honor was something he took very seriously. So, that probably wasn't it. That left two other possibilities, neither of them appealing at first glance. First, and far more likely to Scott's mind, his friend could be insane and actually believed what he had said. He half hoped that that was the case, because it precluded the other possibility entirely, but on the other hand, that would mean that his friend was in need of serious help. And yet, there was always the other possibility.
He could actually be telling the truth. As insane and impossible an idea as it was, he just might be telling the truth. That in itself was mind boggling, because it meant a whole host of things that he had held as absolute truths were nothing more than false assumptions. Finally, trapped between the two possibilities, Scott scanned his friend's face. It was wholly serious, no trace of humor or deceit to be seen. Taking a deep breath, Scott nodded, accepting the inevitable.
"You really are serious, aren't you?" he asked. When his friend nodded, he licked his lips nervously, another possibility coming to him. This had to be a dream. There was no other logical explanation. And, since that was the case, there was no harm in seeing where this increasingly odd conversation led. Still, even as he said his answer, he felt as if he were stepping off a cliff into thin air. "Alright, show me."
His roommate grinned broadly in reply, motioning him to come closer. Scott walked over to him as he looked back at the mirror. As we walked, the only thing he could think of was that this dream was getting weirder by the second. Then, his blonde friend turned back to him and spoke.
"What do you see in the mirror?" he asked. Scott shrugged inwardly and looked at the mirror's flawless surface. To be completely honest, he half expected it to somehow be like a funhouse mirror, hideously warping his reflection into something horrible. Then he would wake up and finish his chemistry homework, then get some real sleep, because this was obviously the product of not having slept enough. But, though he urged the mirror to change so he could wake up, it remained exactly the way it normally was. Finally, after a few moments of silent staring, he was forced to resign himself to remaining in dreamland at least a little while longer.
"You and me." Scott replied, looking back at his roommate. "Why?" The blonde haired boy was wearing a secretive smile on his face, holding out his hand towards him as if for a hand shake. As Scott reached out towards him, his roommate spoke once more.
"Look again." He ordered. Scott turned his attention to the mirror's surface and suddenly his arm was seized up to his elbow. Before he could react, before he could do anything at all, he suddenly felt an odd sensation flooding him, spreading out from his friend's grip. It was a tingling sort of energy that made him twitch, shivering with the unfamiliar feeling. Then, all at once, an ecstasy he had never before experienced washed into him and he shivered, goose bumps rising all over his body. But, then, a moment later he gasped, forgetting all about what he was feeling. The image in the mirror had changed.
At first, it had seemed to be their normal reflections. But then, at the same time the ecstasy flooded him, the mirror's surface seemed to shimmer, like a mirage. The humans in the mirror had evaporated, as if they were no more than thin disguises for what lay underneath, and suddenly he was looking at two anthro wolves, both larger than humans, and both frighteningly real looking. They did not look like computer generations, or paintings or drawings, all the mediums he had seen such figures in. If they hadn't been moving, he would have thought he was looking at a photograph. Suddenly apprehensive, Scott looked over at his friend to find him looking back at the mirror, reaching out with his free hand towards it surface.
"Oh, a word of advice," He said over his shoulder, "Hold tight..."