"Wake up, sleeping beauty! We're halfway there!"

An annoying voice reaches out to me. On the top of that, the some broad illumination falls directly over my face, making me turn my head to the other side.

"Just 5 more minutes," I reply groggily, trying to cover my ears, but in vain, instead I nuzzle more on the soft velvety cover beneath me.

A gentle breeze tickles my face, brushing my hair off smoothly along the flow. It's a bit warm and dry, or maybe there's a little salt floating around the air. But my body strangely feels a lot of warmth, only excluding my face. The reason may lie back at my dorm, where I left my physical body under covers with Jackie.

My eyes spread-open at the sudden realization.

I straighten up to look around my surrounding. We are passing through a dessert, relatively less searing than it should be, and it seems like the sun has just come out a few minutes ago, but it's still too dazzling to look at.

And indeed I am up in the sky, but I'm not moving myself, yet I'm still going ahead, as if I'm on an aeroplane, but an open one.

"Finally you're up, and here I thought you're never gonna open your eyes, and I need to get your prince alone to give you a true love's kiss!"

I turn my head behind to glare at the familiar pair of dark eyes.

And like always Misaki dismisses me.

"Buzz off! Give her a break," a deep thick voice rumbles, and strangely enough, it's familiar to me as well.

My eyes shoot beneath me, and it's a big bird over which I was lying just a minute ago, and if I'm not that wrong, the voice emerged from it.

I clutch on to its big tender brown feathers, and amidst the stark daylight, my mind goes blank, as I speak, "Luc?"

"Ah yes, yes, or who else would it be?", Misaki cuts in. "See? Told ya, birdie, that he will make it up to you, and here he is! When I contacted him saying that you're barely clinging to your last breath, he just sprinted off here in all sweats in the shortest period I've ever seen him coming, and when he got there, he was like 'where is she, my sorry ass gotta save her', and heaving like a dog. Oh God! His face was just so priceless!"

Misaki erupts into a fit of sardonic laughter, grabbing onto his stomach, and going half-bent down.

"Shut it, you squidhead!", Luc's voice rumbles, probably with both anger and embarrassment. "You tricked me into it!"

"Yeah, cause only can make things fair!"

A little quake evokes, making me tighten my grip on the feathers.

"Huh? What you thought? That way you can push me off your back and slap my face with your dirty ass?", Misaki snaps. "Huh! I'm not that slow when it comes to catching on your deeds! You bloody old fart!"

"Stop flapping your mouth so uselessly, you moron!"

"Gomen'nasai! Can't do that. Learnt from ya, you know!"

Luc was about to come up with something sassy, but I decide, it's time when I should cut in, or this contest won't end in this lifetime.

"Where are we?"

"It's called Lut Dessert, and as you see, my dear birdie, we're in Iran right now," Misaki informs, beating it up to Luc, who is a big fat bird right now. I'm still having a little problem in taking in this fact.

"How I've been passed out?" I ask, stretching myself and covering my mouth as a yawn rolls out inadvertently.

"Not much! Only 9 hours!"

I gasp as I start to estimate the time we've been left on.

"Cut her some slack, moron!", Luc snaps. "She's not a real spirit, but just a mere human. She can't pull off as much as you can."

"It's nothing like that," I protest in a low voice.

"Ugh! Your physical strength has nothing to do with it, young lady," Luc snaps, shutting me completely.

"Yes, yes! Do it more! I feel injustice when you let her slide so easily," Misaki comments from behind.

"Shut up, idiot! I'm not yet done with you!"

"Thank you," I say as this sudden feel of gratitude rushes over me all at once.

I just realize only now that I've come so far, and without their help, I couldn't have survived this long.

And it is both bizarre and amazing that how close I've gotten with these two weird beings, not by blood, but heart, and I can't be more thankful than that.

"For what?" Luc's deep voice rumbles.

"Yes, yes! It's better that you've already said it, or else I was just gonna ask you anyway," Misaki notes nonchalantly, gaining himself another short lecture from Luc.

"You know, I share my happiness with everyone equally, if I laugh, I also make others laugh," I start to speak, as an uncertain emotion settles over me, making them stop arguing at once.

"But I like to keep my problems to myself. Even if I'm sad, still I don't put my emotions on sleeve...It's kinda privilege to me."

My mind goes back to that time when I first realized that I fell harder for him, and before I can feel the elation of that certain feeling, I had to let him go, and I did so because my love was unconditional and pristine.

I had held it in so perfectly for so many days, that it sometimes scared me to bones. I was afraid, I might become an emotionless empty shell. But now I realize that I'm still not decayed beyond repair.

I smile wistfully, my eyes distant, a bizarre sorrow lingering in my gaze.

"Maybe, it's the first time, that I shared my scars with someone."

I turn to Misaki. "And I don't regret it. That's what I'm grateful for."

He throws me his toothy mellow smile in return.

"Don't be thankful for what you deserve," Luc exclaims. "It can be harmful for your vanity."

"Yes, yes, that's one thing I agree with him, birdie!"

The temperature starts to rise with the sun soaring up more in the east lemon sky.

"You're an amazing soul, and you don't need to prove that to everyone else. Sooner or later people will realize that on their own, cause...you deserve that, and you have that."

Luc's words push through the valves of my heart, touching something, and leaving its imprint behind. It feels as if that's exactly what I was wanting to hear. The exact words. The exact things.

Then another thought dawns upon me so suddenly.

"Luc?"

"Hmm," he hums in response.

"Why do you think I cried, I mean, you know what I did, when you asked me to give up my ability to give love to others?"

"Hmm...maybe because you want to love someone, and that person may come to your mind while I said that," Luc tries to relate.

I go through my mind, rummaging each corner and nook to find a mere hint of someone new I want to love. After him, I haven't considered any guy, who can stir up my insides like he used to do.

That feeling is not easy to find, and when it comes, the sky is definitely pink, and the butterflies desperately come alive.

"I don't think there's someone..."

Luc cuts me in. "Love is not about age, place, time or sex. Love has no impeccable definition that can fit inside a particular gender, it can be in the form of a guy, or maybe it's a girl. Likewise, it can be in broad daylight, as well as under the starlit sky. It can be found in somewhere far, or maybe it's just beside you; just that you can't see it."

"Maybe there's someone who cares for you, worries after you, looks after you, help you, support you...no matter what. Maybe you've ignored it, cause it's impossible or trivial," he adds with a short chuckle. "Love is complex, young lady, only when you put it like that way. Otherwise it's as easy as this squidhead."

"Hey! Hey! Why drag me into every dumb example of yours?" Misaki protests agitatedly.

Then they go on about it again.

Luc's words have some weight, and he's right. Love doesn't follow any rules. Maybe it's me who has always seen it in a complex light, through abstract mirror. That's why I've been scared to take a step ahead towards it, and so I've always pushed everyone away from me.

I don't think, taking away my potential to giving love to others, will make any difference, since I feel this hollow inside, every single day, and it hurts.

"But you'll go on loving others whom you already love, so don't worry," someone replies inside my head, making me put a cease on my chain of thoughts.

I look at Luc. He turns his bird's neck behind, looks at me directly in the eyes, and winks before I can recover from the sudden shock, confirming my assumptions.

"And I know, you already do love someone!"

*****

I lift an arm over my eyes, to prevent the bold intrusion of the stubborn scorching sun-rays, so I can see Luc flying back, tracing the blue skyline, his brown feathers shimmering like crystal against the golden light.

He can't cross the Indus valley, for some curse he got from a witch around there, so he dropped us before the Indus river before taking his leave. And we have to pull this off now on our own.

Before leaving, he gave me a hairpin, engraving the crimson stone, so that I don't lose it again, nor someone can snatch it easily away from me. I put it neatly at one side of my short hair.

The sun is above the head now. With the weird time zones ahead, it seems as if the daylight fades so swiftly and easily.

Unlike the obscure-narrow-sharp small brook back at lap of Romanian hills, Indus is heading towards the South, heavily ladened with all the water coming from its tributaries and other parts, in a slow leisure pace without a chaos, swaying its path through the plains, and providing a bizarre serenity amidst the entire valley, as if hushing a child with a delusional lullaby.

Reaching its wide generous bankside, I let the sweet breeze run over my face, as I watch the offbeat rhythmic back tides going against the river current without a complaint. It's beautiful.

At that moment, something so colorful catches my attention. Amidst the bland arrangement, there stands out so effortlessly a rainbow colored flower at the base of a tall-old-dusted-brown tree.

The surreality of the moment is so thick that without even thinking twice I advance towards it to see what species of plantation it belongs to.

It's a usual habit of mine, to observe my surrounding, and check on if there's something new or something I'm not aware of.

So caught up in that habit, I crouch down near the flower, with Misaki following me behind.

"What is it?", he asks curiously.

"I don't know, but it's so unusual," I reply, moving aside, so he can also check it. Catching on notes, he bents down beside me. "Don't you think so?"

He scratches his neck before replying, "Yeah, it is!"

I hum in response.

The peculiarity of the flower is infinite beyond any logical explanation, with its each petal in each color of a rainbow, and the fragrance is so sweetly celestial that it can light up a day, make the sweetest honey the world has ever tasted, or even capable of turning a lost Romeo's head towards its unusual sensuality.

I don't know what happened, but as if under some trance, I touch a petal of the flower, and from the corner of my eye, I watch Misaki doing the same.

As soon as I touch it, something gets pinched at the tip of my finger and at once some blue substance starts to splash out of there. And in seconds, right before my wide eyes, the substance gets splattered all over my face.

Getting petrified in fear, I stumble back and get up instantly.

To my utter shock, I watch Misaki passing out beside me, and in moments, my surrounding starts to revolve with so much momentum that it makes me dizzy and gradually I give in.

But before my body falls on to the ground, I see someone approaching us, and to my surprise, adeptly preventing my untouchable frame from falling.

And then everything blacks out.

*****

My consciousness starts to resurface as some weird continuous chanting reaches out to me. It's so loud and coarse that my ears start to ring restlessly and I'm afraid that I might partially lose my hearing ability.

Prickled by some strong light explosion, I open my eyes discreetly, and then start to cough as some compelling pungent scent happens to strain my smell buds, along with some mystic yellowish smoke which constricts my breathing, making me gasp for air desperately. It's absolutely smothering.

A peculiar scene meets my exhausted gaze as soon as I open my eyes.

There is dark everywhere, and a group of five women seated along a circle, amidst which some mystical obscure astral chart has been drawn in red, and if I'm not that wrong, then it must be some dried blood, but I can't be sure whether it's human blood or animal thereof. The smoke is emitting off the center of it, but there is no fire.

The women have their eyes closed, as their red tinted lips keep on moving incessantly, spewing those queer incantations. They are dressed in dark black, which is prominently depicting an evil aura all around them, like a halo of dark. They have this tiara of black roses around their heads. But the most captivating part is that all of them are unbelievably gorgeous, as if they've been just borne to be beautiful.

I tilt my head up, and while trying to look around I find that, at least more than ten humans have been tied there with chains, hanging upside down from the thick boughs of a large banyan tree encircling the women and their weird practice, and they are all unconscious.

At that moment, I realize that I've not been tied up like them, but I'm at the front of this whole modus operandi, my legs and hands wide spread, and my body tied against a wooden board.

Adrenaline pumps in at once, and I try to search for any mere trace of Misaki, who is fortunately and unfortunately beyond my eye sight right at this moment.

I start to panic as I think of all the possible things, that might have happened to him.

Suddenly the women spell something at their highest pitch, making me squirm on my own, and then gradually they open their eyes, and strangely enough, those are blood red.

They look at me at such way which suppressed my soul even more, and there's this power at their gaze that even can make a dead alive.

All of them get up maintaining their circle, both of their hands adeptly equipped with sharp knives, as they go over to the hanging bodies. And before I can even understand anything, the women splash their bellies in a weird shape of a five-pointed star, making blood drip down their faces, onto the ground. And in seconds, there is a thick circle of raw blood on down there.

Watching the disgusting blood-splatter, I start to feel nauseated, and my heart starts to hammer against my ribcage, threatening to leap out of there at any moment. Water trickles past my cheeks, as I realize that it might be the last day I'd be breathing freely, and my wish to confront my past would remain as only an unfinished dream.

I start to rummage through my memories, both happiest and saddest, and while going through them all over again, I reanalyze each one of them. I reflect on myself, and try to perceive the scenario from others' perspectives, and strangely enough, what was previously intractable to me, I start to get them so easily now.

And in one of the blurred memories, I see Jackie and me smiling at each other, and I suddenly remember, that day was the day when I was really happy after a long time. It's weird yet beautiful.

My chain of thoughts gets shattered in a moment, when one of the women approaches me with that sinful face of hers, putting her heinous heart on sleeves.

But before she could even touch me, water start to fall all over the place from where the smoke was coming off previously, making the women get drenched and angry. At once, they get alerted, and frustration makes its way to them in the form of several sweat beads on their foreheads.

Their eyes shoot up in an attempt to find the source of such nuisance. I follow their gaze, and a smile cracks onto my face when I see Misaki with a hosepipe, which he throws away at that moment.

"Ugh! You stupid vermin!" One of them barks at him, while getting up, anger dripping in her blood eyes.

"I told you to decapitate that abomination!" Another one argues.

"Don't you dare blame me, Haniya!" Another woman with sharp tone snaps with spite.

"Tell me, whose idea was it to leave the vermin behind, and only pick the girl up?" The alleged Haniya retorts back.

"And who was it that supported the idea, only cause she has a fetish for good-looking guy?"

While their attention is diverted for a single moment, when they go on blaming each other, Misaki reaches out to me sneakily, and starts to undo my chains.

"Are you alright?" I whisper to him warily.

He chuckles lowly. "I should be the one asking you that."

"Whatever," I retort. "Who the hell are they?"

"Necromancers! I guess, they were trying to make a pact with the 11th dimension, in the price of your soul," he explains hastily.

Looking behind him, he checks on the arguing women. "We need to get out of here as soon as possible."

He was about to get up, but I grab his arm, stopping him.

"We need to do something about them. It's possible that the cuts haven't touched the arteries yet, so they just need some sutures and antiseptic, and...and they'll be just fine," I manage to speak somehow, my voice trembling in fear and shock, my eyes looking over their still bodies.

Misaki shakes me grabbing my both shoulders. "Come to your senses, birdie. They're already dead. There's no time to be emotional."

Uncontrolled tears run past my cheeks, wetting them restlessly.

"Stop fighting among yourselves, idiots," a loud voice booms, silencing the fighting duo at once. "And stop the abomination before he ruins everything we've been prepping for so many days! We can't let our golden ticket slip away like this way."

"Yes, Vienna!"

"Hold this," he smirks, as he gave me the gun, given by Luc. "I guess, it's time for some action."

"Oh, I hate action!" I accept the gun reluctantly.

Misaki winks at me while dismissing my giddiness.

"Wait, where is he?" Another female voice frets.

"Zoya, why don't you ask that to Haniya and Anya?" The last one of them taunts with annoyance.

We start to take our positions.

Vienna turns towards the board where I was previously chained. Seeing the chains broken, and with no trace of me, she starts to go bonkers, and blames others for their ignorance and childishness.

"Do we really have to do this?" I whisper to Misaki.

"If we don't kill them, they'll make sure that we die." He throws me a mellow smile.

"But we won't start it, unless they make any move, okay?" I exclaim.

He gives it a thought, before approving it.

"Look! There they are," Anya alerts the others, as I see her eyes darting daggers at us, and she smiles creepily. "Don't worry, Vienna, I'll go get them!"

Without another warning, she throws two bloody knives at us.

"Dodge those," Misaki instructs. "Quickly!"

I do as he says, making those forthcoming knives collide with the tree behind us, creating a little explosion back there.

"Dodge whatever she's throwing, those can pierce your body," Misaki warns, sparing a glance over me.

"Okay!"

The next thing I know is that they all start attacking, while throwing some mystic glowing objects at us, perpetually one after another. Those are coming with so much speed that I'm having a bit trouble in evading them, but from the way Misaki is dodging them, it's clear that he has some experience.

Suddenly he shoots two shots from his gun, taking out Haniya in the process, which angers the others even more, and they start coming at us with more livid and more vengeance.

The next few moments pass by in a blur, my ears getting fazed occasionally with the loud explosions and gunshots. It all seems as if I've been put in the pages of an action comic scene against my will and now I can't get out of there.

Life is indeed full of surprises.

Gradually Misaki takes out everyone of them, one by one, and at the same time he makes sure that I remain unharmed.

After the last shot gets fired off my gun and a body collapses on the ground, covered in blood, I slump on the grassy field, being unable to say anything at all. Misaki is quick to come over and comfort me. He kneels beside me and gives me a tight hug, taking my head on his shoulder.

"It's alright. Everything's over now. I took care of everything," he whispers to me. "Now we can go and get your prince Charming!"

He chuckles after cutting a subtle joke.

"So don't make that sappy face, and put on your big girl panties!"

I was about to hug him back, when my eyes get stuck at something in distance.

As I realize what is going to happen next, I do what both my instinct and my logic tell me to.

At once I push Misaki away with force, and then take the hairpin off my hair.

Getting up in front of the aggressive Vienna, I throw the pin towards the mystic beam which she threw at us, and ducks down to dodge the attack myself, in case the stone doesn't work.

And just according to my estimations, there's an explosion which effectively prevents the beam. Catching on the hints, Misaki doesn't delay another moment to trigger a few shots from his gun, to make sure that he kills Vienna completely.

Throwing the gun away, he runs over to me, looking like a child whose popsicle has been taken away.

"What were you thinking when you did that?" He snaps at me in a shaky voice, worry brimming at his tone.

"Luc told me to use it, when I'd be in any trouble, so I just applied it," I reply discreetly.

"Gosh, birdie! He told you to use it when you're in danger, and feel like returning! It's a freaking Homecoming stone for his sorry ass's sake," he explains agitatedly.

"But it worked anyway."

"What if it wouldn't have?"

"Why are we even considering the 'what ifs'. You're safe, I am safe, and that's what we want. Isn't it?"

"No, that doesn't change the fact that you could've died! And let's not say how you've just destroyed your last chance to get back to your body!"

"So what else I would've done? Letting you disappear? Like forever?" I snap at him.

"Yes! That would be better," he retorts angrily. "I'm already dead, so that doesn't even matter."

"How's that better! Tell me, Misaki! Letting the one, who has saved me all this while, die! How does that make things better?" I scream on his face, as tears prickle at the corners of my eyes.

"Cause I've let someone die too," he screams back, and then at the next moment, he stops himself abruptly as he realizes that he has said something that he shouldn't have.

And this time, I think I realize what he meant back at Luc's place when he said that I wasn't the only one who's hurting here.