And yet they were counting on her, and more to the point, they placed their trust in her. Obviously they had more faith in her than she had in herself. She could buckle under the weight of their expectation and give in to disappointment, or she could use their faith as motivation. All she had to do was try.
She stared at the map in her hands and tried to empty her mind of any distracting thoughts. The thoughts dissipated, Last City falling away from her sight as she followed the drawn lines of the map with her eyes. The ambient sounds of the room faded into the background.
A picture took shape in her mind, colors bleeding in like a damp watercolor across a blank canvas. There was a thick blanket of the greenest trees she had ever seen, spread out like an army and expanding out into a deep forest. There were bright flowers with prickly petals and what looked like antennae, proliferating in sporadic bursts of purple budding off of green vines that tangled around the tree branches. The sky was a vibrant amethyst, stars dusted across as far as the eye cloud see as violent swirls of billowing clouds the color of thunder and the sea coiled around each other. The atmosphere descended around her, the amethyst diluting into aqua and finally a pale gold that touched the tips of the green trees.
In the distance through the trees she could just make out the sound of a song that sounded like her name. She couldn’t place the scale of distance to judge how far away the sound was coming from.
A force of mass grabbed at her hand before the sky fell around her. Her body exploded into a ribbon of atoms as she was pulled through the sky like when she stepped through the gate on Earth towards Terra. The movement was too quick to decipher anything visually and the world moved around her in a stream of vaporous color. Even quicker than it had started she felt her body form and reshape, atoms packing tightly together as she materialized. A cold tingling radiated through her extremities. She thought she would never get used to the sensation of coming undone and being put back together again. It just wasn’t natural.
Her eyes opened into a golden light that settled delicately around her, touching the tips of green trees like she had seen in her mind. Around them the forest rose like spires towards a sparkling amethyst sky, the colors as deep and vibrant as she had imagined not a moment before. She turned in place and saw the forest spread out around her, green into deep purple as the landscape stretched from the ground up to the sky. Was she still imagining it? The world around her looked nothing like the dreary monochromatic world of Terra that she had seen from the transport windows.
“How did you do it?” Eva whispered, sounding utterly enthralled.
Zoe hadn’t noticed she was standing by her side. Her face was turned upward toward the sky, her blue eyes wide in amazement. “Do what?”
Eva swallowed and lowered her head, allowing her eyes to take in the explosion of colorful life around them. “You brought us here on your own. We hadn’t even stepped into the gate yet.”
What?! “How is that possible?”
“I don’t know, you tell me! You must have done something!”
Zoe’s shoulders shrugged up to her ears. “I have no clue. It’s like it this place just came to life in my mind. I didn’t even know what was happening.”
Eva’s mouth opened but she made no sound. She closed it and swallowed again, took in a deep breath of air and filled her chest until it expanded out from her body like a balloon. “Okay well we’re here. What’s next? Where are we supposed to go?”
“You’re asking me?”
“Yes, you!” she cried. “Look at the map again, maybe there’s a clue.”
They stood huddled together as Zoe stretched out the map in their hands. A knot constricted in her stomach as she realized the map had changed, coming to life with color as the world around them had. Strokes of green flourishes formed a circumference around a gold icon in the shape of a crown, expanding and contracting like the rhythm of a heartbeat. Next to it a second icon pulsated.
“Is that possible?” Eva whispered from her side, her eyes locked on the two images.
“What is it?”
“A laurel wreath. It’s the sigil of my family name, or it used to be. I haven’t seen one since my parents died. My mother wore one around her head when we laid her to rest, just as her mother before her, and her grandmother before that.” Her soft voice clipped as she spoke, the enormity of the words tinged with both sadness and appreciation.
Zoe gently placed a hand on Eva’s shoulder to comfort her. She could only imagine how difficult remembering the past would be for her. She at least had the benefit of not knowing what she was missing. Eva, on the other hand, knew that a piece of her life was forgotten, and to remember after so long must have been painful. Zoe reminded herself that their journey was not just about her finding answers, but also about all the people whose lives had been taken, wholly or partially, by the Stratons.