Chapter 2

Wearing the emerald moonstone is like my equivalent of sitting in a naughty corner. It's the realms most nauseating feeling. Instead of jumping it's like my consciousness is trapped in a dark room unable to escape. So there is no point in laying back in my bed and closing my eyes. The notion would seem tedious.

I sit at my work desk in my bedroom trying to finish all my homework. I manage to somehow complete my paper on the brain and move on to English. I hear a slight knock on my bedroom door. "Zel, can I come in?" Klara asks.

"Nope," I say and turn back to write my essay. She doesn't listen to me because she comes right in with a tray of food. She sets the tray of pancakes and hot chocolate on the side of my table and the sweet smell of chocolate mixing with vanilla and peppermint is enough to have my stomach growling and mouth salivating.

'Don't look at it,' I tell myself.

But it's so beautiful.

Before I can even comprehend what's happening there's a fork in my hand and a piece of pancake in my mouth.

'You traitor!' I tell my stomach.

"I'm sorry Zel," Klara sighs taking a seat on my bed and I knew it was a trap. Pancakes this good always come with a catch.

"Yeah me too," I let out a breath of hesitation and reach for the cup of hot chocolate before I continue to finish what I want to say. "I know I can be a handful to put up with but that's only because I don't fit in here," I say and lazily sink down into my chair.

"That's because you don't even try," she counters my excuse and she is not wrong.

Ever since I learned about what I am and what I can do I enjoyed the realm of dreams more than I ever did the light one. It wasn't easy at first because I had to endure training to defeat the night terrors, but I enjoyed helping people defeat their demons. It was therapeutic to me and helped me forget about my own demons in the process.

"You right, I will try harder," I agree after a while and she quirks an eyebrow at me.

"Zel you have said that time and time again and as soon as I take out your stone you go back to not wanting to try."

It is most unfortunate that she knew me like the back of her hand. Could anyone blame me for not wanting to try here? When all this reality ever gave me was lemons? Sour lemons every single day of my life. My life in this realm was mundane. Having to supress my magic and act as if there weren't bigger things going on.

"Oh and your dad says he will pick you up at three," Klara mentions as if it is something I should be knowing. She stands up and begins hurrying to the door.

There we go, there's today's dose of lemons!

"Not so fast aunt Klara," I say and she stops dead in her tracks.

"I never agreed to go to Clive's today," I smile bitter sweet, feeling a little tense at spending the rest of the day with Clive. Klara still hasn't responded to me and she is standing at the entrance of my door giving me that 'oh did I forget to mention your father called' look. I get that look once or sometimes twice every month.

"Why I ought to put the emerald moonstone around your neck." My was voice dripping in outrage.

"If I had told you would you have agreed to go?" she asks.

"Hell no!" I yell in outrage and she narrows her eyes at my choice of language and tone. Her lips purse as she gives me that cold-eyed stare that scares me more than any night terror I have ever seen.

I breathe out heavily. "Fine, I will go." Ill fulfil her wish and show her I'm capable of change and just maybe she will remove the stone.

She quirks a suspecting eyebrow and stares at me thoughtfully for a minute. "You serious?" she questions and her cold-stare melts like ice on the first day of spring.

"Yeah I will humour him," I shrug and turn back to my Macbeth essay.

A few hours pass and I sit at my table wishing I hadn't agreed to go to Clive's. I would rather eat a whole watermelon than spend the day with him and his wife.

And I hate watermelon.

As promised Clive's car pulls up outside my house at three. I share one last look at my aunt before I step out of the house. "It's not too late you can always help me come up with an excuse-"

"Behave," she tells me, not allowing me to get out of this and I smirk.

"I always do," I exaggerate the word always and she laughs hysterically as if I'd made a joke.

I walk up to Clive's car and pull the door open. "Hey kiddo," he says with a smile plastered on his face. Clive's eyes are brown and so is his hair, he has a strong jawline and his beard is thick but neatly trimmed. His hair is spotting a few greys and if we had a normal father and daughter relationship I would probably make a joke about it, but since we not he gets no joke. Heck, he will be ever so lucky to get the end of a punch line from me.

Clive and I look nothing alike. I look more like my mother. Clive doesn't know about my powers. I don't think he even knew my mother had powers.

"Clive," I greet, the emptiness clear in my voice. I get into his car and put my seat belt on.

"How's school?" he asks.

Great, he is trying to communicate and I want to leave already.

"It's great," I manage to answer without adding a snarky response. "How's work?" I ask and his face lights up at me asking about his life.

"Oh, it's going great Zel. We just signed off some new building plans and I'm going to be the lead architect on the project," he explains. Clive is brilliant at what he does. I will admit his designs for buildings are kind of cool.

The rest of the drive is filled in silence... Awkward silence. I can practically sense how nervous he is. At almost every street light or stop sign he drums his fingers on the steering wheel and turns to give me an awkward smile. I return his smile with an even awakwarder smile by showing him a few of my teeth.

Finally, we reach his house and I practically dash out of the car.

His house is a basic two-story house and it's painted white. The front of the house has some pink flowers in little pots. I follow him up the three steps that led to the house and he opens the door to his home for me and gestures for me to walk in first. I take a step inside and I can smell food burning.

"Um Clive something's burning," I inform him.

"Oh that's just Susan cooking," he chuckles.

Great food poisoning.

I take a step into the kitchen and there she is Cruella de vil in her polka dot knee-length dress with a high bun on her head. Her face is plastered in makeup and of course, she has her famous red lipstick that would sometimes remain on her teeth.

"Zel dear," she smiles and walks towards me to wrap her filthy paws around me.

It burns!!!!!

Honestly a night terror is not that bad compared to most humans.

I keep my hands at the side of my body as if they are glued there. I see she is being nice to me now. I bet as soon as Clive turns his back she will be snarling at me. "Susan," I greet in a flat tone of voice and Clive smiles at the both of us.

She smells like moth balls and baby powder.

"Alright I will leave you two ladies to chat I got some work to finish up," Clive says and turns to walk out of the kitchen.

Nooooo don't leave me alone with her!!!

As soon as Clive is out of sight and hearing range, the smile on her face turns into a line. "So what made you come crawling back here?" she asks and there it is. I knew it, it didn't take very long for that sweet innocent smile to turn into a vicious scowl as soon as Clive left.

"Firstly if you that curious I was invited and secondly," I couldn't help but laugh as I tried to say what I wanted to next. "It's funny that you think I would crawl back here. This is the last place on earth I would ever crawl to," I say elaborate and she scoffs narrowing her beady eyes in on me. Having enough of my brief encounter with her I turn on my heel and walk out of the kitchen and into the living room.

This house is not my childhood home. Clive moved here after my mum left. The strange part about my mum leaving is that I don't even remember her showing any signs of unhappiness. I mean I don't remember her and Clive fighting we were happy. If she was unhappy she did a very good job of hiding it.

The even stranger part of the situation was the fact that Clive didn't even bother to look for her, he carried on his life like she had never even existed and Cruella is evidence of that. I was still unable to move on. Weeks went on and when I would come home from school I would still run into the kitchen in hope's to find her cooking or baking something at the stove.

I guess I should've taken a page out of Clive's book sooner and pretended that she never existed. There was a time when it was just Clive and I before he can remarry. I remember asking him about my mother as a kid and he would just stare blankly at me as if I was speaking an entire different language.

I never asked him about her again after that and I don't even ask Klara about why her sister decided to leave her eight-year-old daughter and husband. I don't wait for my mother to come back anymore because it's too late now.

I take a seat on the brown couch that's in the middle of the room. A TV hangs on the wall in front of me and on the walls are pictures of Clive and Susan's wedding.

I fish my phone out my pocket and decide to check the time. It's only half-past three.

The actual hell...

Goddess help me.

A few minutes later Clive walks into the living room and clears his throat. I look up at him and he is holding a small package. He often did this. Whenever he saw me he would buy me an outrageously expensive gift. I don't know maybe he thought money would fix our broken relationship.

All the gifts he has given me from the time I was eight is sitting in a box in my closet. "Here," he says handing me the small package and I take it from him. I pull off the ribbon on the box and open it to reveal a pair of diamond earrings.

Whoever said diamonds was a girl's best friend lied. Food is my best friend.

The earrings are shaped into stars and in the centre of it is a diamond. It's kind of beautiful.

"Do you like it?" He asks and I look up at him.

"Thank you," I nod even though I know I won't wear them. I couldn't help it I was too prideful for my own good sometimes.

"Dinner is ready," Susan announces from the kitchen.

"Great, I'm hungry," Clive says and gestures for me to follow him into a dining room. He takes a seat at the head of the set table and I take one next to him. Susan comes in and takes a seat next to him which is unfortunate for me because she is now sitting directly in front of me.

After a while of everyone putting food on their plate, it's time to eat. I shut my eyes tightly and lifted the fork bringing it slowly into my mouth.

'Behave' Klara's words ring in my head. I take a small bite of the food that way if it's bad I can swallow it instead of spitting it out in front of them.

Surprisingly the food is edible. I guess Susan learned how to cook. We eat in silence. The only sound is the sound of the cutlery as we eat. Clive gives me a small smile and then looks back to his wife who smiles sweetly at him.

"How's the food?" he asks me.

"It's edible," I say and Susan flashes me her fakest and brightest smile. Hell if she doesn't stop smiling like that I'm going to have to stop calling her Cruella and start calling her Mrs's Voorhees because that smile she gives me is just terrifying.

After dinner, Clive goes back into his study to complete some of his work and I volunteer to help load the dishwasher. Hopefully, Clive will tell Klara that I was on my 'best behaviour' today and she will remove the stone.

As I load the dishwasher Cruella steps foot into the kitchen." I hope you know that no one is buying this act of yours."

I turn to face her with a plate in my hand. "Whatever are you talking about Susan?" I ask turning around again to put the plate in the dishwasher.

"This," she says moving her hands up and down in front of me. "The day you change will be the day pig's talk." I can't help but laugh at that. She is making this too easy.

"The expression is when pigs fly Susan. The day I change will be the day pigs fly and you are right," I laugh.

"I hear laughter are you guys having fun without me?" Clive pops his head into the kitchen.

"Oh yeah we having blast," My words drip with sarcasm but Clive doesn't note it and continues to smile at the both of us.

"I'm glad you having fun honey." He smiles at me and this time I put on my fakest smile. Susan is a hoot. I can see why Clive keeps her around she is funny.

"I'm ready to go home now Clive," I announce and the smile from his face drops. I had enough laughs for one day.

"But this is your home too," Clive argues and it takes every bit of self-control in me not to laugh in the man's face.

After a few more minutes of being with Clive and the step monster, I insist on going home and Clive gives in and decides to drive me back. It's not like he had choice. He couldn't make me stay with him. I could always walk back home. His car stops outside my aunt's place and I move to unbuckle my seat belt.

"It was good spending time with you Zel," he smiles.

"Likewise," I agree and move to jump out of the car.

I walk into the house and shut the door behind me before leaning against it and letting out a miserable groan. I've served my punishment. One awkward evening.

"Zel, is that you?" I hear Klara ask.

"No it's a burglar," I say and walk to the kitchen to find her hunched over the kitchen table with the newspaper in her hands. She has a worried expression on her face.

"What's wrong?" I ask in seriousness and she looks up at me through her reading glasses. "What is it?" I question and she slides the newspaper to me. The headline reads 'Local fisherman's heart stops beating in his sleep.' My eyes widen and I pick up the newspaper.

'Janet Hudson is the wife of local fisherman Richard Hudson. Janet says that her husband Richard was a healthy man and showed no signs of being ill. Janet explains that her husband started screaming in his sleep last night causing her to wake up panicked. She said that her efforts to wake him up had failed because he just wouldn't wake no matter how many times she shook him or threw cold water on him. She explained to nurses that soon after many attempts to wake him the screaming stopped, but here's the thing when his screaming stopped so did his heart. Ms. .Hudson now awaits the autopsy results in which she hopes to find answers in what caused the young Mr. Richard Hudson's heart to stop beating in his sleep...'

Klara's face is pale and she runs a hand through her hair. "It's getting worse. These things are growing stronger every night." She breathes and folds up the newspaper.

"Well it doesn't help when you benching me." I take a seat at the table across from her.

"Zel," Klara sighs.

"No a man died last night Klara. How many people probably died last night? People that I could of saved."

"Zel I know you want to help, but you have to remember we can't save everyone. There are only a few of our kind left," she explains and I run a hand down my face bringing it to rest over my mouth." Anyway how was dinner?"

"If you think you changing the topic to something a little less grim you wrong."

"Was it that bad?" she asks.

"No, I over exaggerate. It was fine," I say and turn to walk away.

"Zel wait," she calls and I turn around to face her. "You know, I know it is hard being able to jump from realm to realm because both are very real to us, but you have to know that this realm is just as important." I nod my head in understanding and then she wakes up off her seat and approaches me

"Seirá ona besplatno," She whispers a small incantation and her hands glow in warm light as the emerald stone floats out of my necklace and back into her hands.

"You letting me jump?" I smile and she nods.

"Under one condition. You treat this realm with as much importance as you do the dream one."

"Yeah, yeah," I say and turn on my heel to run up to my room. I get up to my room and immediately lay down on my bed. I close my eyes and I feel my consciousness fade.

When I open my eyes I'm in the dream realm. Standing on the realm bridge overlooking the dream sea. It feels like an eternity since I have been here, but in reality, it's only been one night.

"Where have you been," I hear Ri ask and I turn around to face him. Well to see half of his face.

"I got into a little trouble" I admit and he nods.

The sea begins turning and Orion stands up straight. "Well I'm glad my partner is back." He smiles and falls backwards off the bridge.