“I can’t. It hurts. I can’t move any further.” His voice came out strangled, as if he couldn’t get enough air to finish his thought.
Tressa tugged hard on Bastian. “Don’t move,” she commanded him, but he continued to tug her forward.
“Something’s pushing me forward and I can’t stop.” His fingers started to slip out of hers too.
Tears streamed down Tressa’s cheeks. They couldn’t step into the fog, experience the euphoria of still being alive, only to have some unseen force tear them apart. A poking at her back reminded her of her hidden guest. Its talons clawed inside the bag, shredding Tressa’s back into fleshy strips as it struggled to get free.
The pain was too much to bear. Tressa let go of both Bastian and Connor, blindly reaching behind her to unhook the toggle holding the bag shut. If she didn’t, Nerak would claw her to a bloody pulp.
With a beating of wings behind her head, the owl flew free of the bag. Tressa fell to the ground, weak, alone, and afraid. “Bastian? Connor?” She cried out for both of them, but heard nothing in return. They were lost to her. Was this how it was to be, then? How long would she last alone? How long until the fog claimed her, taking her last breath from her chest?
She called out once more for Bastian and Connor, but was only greeted by the oppressive silence of the fog. Maybe she was already dead, lost to the ether in a blanket of blindness and solitude.
A small beak nipped at her back, then the weight of the owl pushed down on her shoulder. So she wasn’t alone. Tressa reached up, ruffling Nerak’s feathers. If nothing else, she believed death hadn’t claimed her. Yet.
“What can we do now?” she asked it. The owl responded with a hoot. Warmth spread, a power unlike any she'd experienced permeated her whole body. A faint purple glow bathed the ground in front of her, illuminating her surroundings for the first time.
Trees stood firmly, asserting their claim on the forest no one had successfully traversed in almost eighty years. Dense fog wrapped its tendrils around emaciated tree branches reaching out to each other in a silent cry for help. Eerily silent, the forest was devoid of all life. Tressa shivered, more afraid now than before.
She rose to her feet, stretching out her full height, still feeling dwarfed by the trees. "What can I do with this?" She still not sure exactly what she was experiencing.
Find. Love. Use. Magic.
Tressa started and looked around. There was no one but her and the owl on her shoulder. "Was that you?"
The owl tilted its head. Nerak. Good owl. Love. The owl bobbed its head up and down, nuzzling its beak into Tressa's neck.
"Granna told me stories about communicating with animals, but I never believed it. No one in my village could do it. We thought it was one of those stories that gets bigger with time."
Find. Love. Use. Magic.
"I don't know how," Tressa said.
Silence. Breathe.
Tressa closed her eyes, her eyelashes fluttering against her upper cheeks. She took in a deep breath, then released it slowly through her mouth. As the air passed over her lips, she felt calm float through her body. The magic took over forcing Tressa's eyes open again and casting a purple haze over the whole area.
"Bastian!" she cried out.
“Tressa!” His voice was so far away.
“Bastian! Are you out there? Can you see the light?” She stumbled to her feet, still holding onto the owl with a hand.
“Yes!” he called back. “Connor? Can you see the purple glow?”
Tressa strained for a answer, any indication her friend was still alive and close by. But he didn’t respond. “Bastian! Try to get to me. Follow the light. Maybe we can find Connor together.”
“Don’t move, Tressa. I’m coming!”
She fidgeted. “Are you making that light?” she asked her owl. It bobbed around on her shoulder. She took that as a yes. “I’m not going to hide you anymore, okay? It looks like you may have saved us.”
She hoped, deep in her soul, that Connor was still out there. After a few tense minutes, Bastian’s outline took shape in the fog. Tressa reached out her hands. He grasped them tightly in his. When he tried to yank her into an embrace, she held back. Not with the owl on her shoulder. Maybe not at all.
“Tressa?” Bastian asked. He was still a shadow in the fog, even though she could feel his fingertips on her arm. “How are you doing that?”
So he could see the owl. “It sits there on its own. I’m not doing anything.”
“Owl? What are you talking about? I mean the light.”
Tressa laughed. “The light isn’t me. It’s the owl. Somehow she’s projecting it, helping us to see each other in this mess.”