Chapter Thirty Eight :

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I awoke in a hospital bed, IVs in my arms and an oxygen mask over my face. My head was still killing me... And why was I here? 

I took the oxygen mask off and got out of the bed, pulling the crisp white sheets off of me. A full-length mirror hung on the wall, and I didn't recognize who I saw when I looked into it. 

She was tall, moderately thin and very pale. Shoulder-length white-blonde hair matched her eyelashes and eyebrows, and her eyes were a silver-purple hue. She wore a white T shirt and underwear. It should have been me, but...

I walked closer to the mirror, minding the distance limiting tubes of the IVs. 

That couldn't be me, I thought in disbelief. I was... Grown. My familiar child's face matured into a woman's, and my body as well. 

I reached out and touched the cold, smooth glass of the mirror, tracing my features in it. 

A nurse came into the room. "Oh, sit down." She told me. "You're still dealing with the side effects." She had long, golden blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail and beautiful green eyes.

"Side effects?" I questioned, startled at the quiet and female tone that came from my mouth. 

"That's one of them. Amnesia... I'll call the doctor in."

A few minutes later, the doctor sat in a chair near the edge of my hospital bed. I leaned back against the too-firm pillows, my head aching. He was maybe in his thirties, with short brown hair, dark blue eyes and light colored skin.

"You don't remember anything?" He asked me in a thick Russian accent. He then proceeded to ask me a lot of questions about things I had no knowledge of. 

"What happened to me?" I inquired. 

"You took some sort of drug. We're still trying to figure out the specifics of it, but it's definitely caused you harm. Altered perceptions, physical pain, you couldn't even move and were hardly breathing. You were in laying in that ditch for three days, as far as we know - assuming you took the drug a short while after you left your recent foster home -"

"Foster home?" 

"Lavender. Your parents are dead. They've been dead since you were twelve. You've spent these last seven years running from orphanages, foster homes and even potential adoption parents."

My parents... Dead? For seven years now? My head spun like a ballerina on a stage. "What did you mean, when you were talking about some drug?"

"If you have no recollection of it, then we can't find out who gave it to you. There's too many drug dealers in this city. What you were given was something we believe was experimental, and that's why we can't tell you what you what it is. Because it doesn't exist."

I felt sick now, and I didn't want to hear any more. He understood from the expression on my face and left the room. 

My head spun, with my memory of Dolion and Orpheus and all of the others, but not of my dead parents? I had absolutely no idea what happened within those last seven years I had apparently spent running. None of it made sense...

The window was suddenly open, a cool breeze blowing through the stuffy room. The moon shone on my pale skin, and the nausea stopped. My eyes opened and closed, becoming heavier each time. 

Then she stood there, before my bed. My eyes widened, taking in her feathered, colorful shimmering wings and gorgeous dark skin. "Get me out of here." I pleaded. 

"You'll have to come back eventually, before they declare you dead - when you're awake in our world, you're in a deep sleep; basically a coma in your humans' world."

"What about the drug?" I asked.

"What about it?" She replied. "You know that has nothing to do with your connection to our realm, right? What that drug did was destroy your memory of the last seven years of your life. Except..."

"Except what?"

"You do remember where your parents' home is. That ditch the medics found you in was just across from it." 

"Who gave the drug to me?" I questioned, angry.

"I'm... Still working on the details of that." She shook her head a bit, her blue hair glimmering. 

I held my hands to my head, which persistently hurt. She pressed her hands to my chest, and the pain melted away. I closed my eyes for a second, and when I opened them, I was laying in my bed at home. 

I got up, ran to my mirror. I was the woman version of myself, the me from my world... The concious world, I guess. My eyes glowed amethyst hues, and my hair hung long over my shoulders. I wore an oversized pastel pink sweatshirt, white shorts and pale pink socks. 

I ran downstairs to be greeted by my parents. "How did you sleep?" My mother asked me, and my father sat at the kitchen table with a cup of steaming coffee that smelled amazing. 

I looked out of the large window, at the beautiful sunrise that blossomed pink, orange, and gold across the blue sky. "I slept well." I answered, pulling her into a light hug.

"Love you, dad," I called as I walked to the front door. I heard his reply before I shut the door and stepped out onto the porch - "I love you too, dear."

Dolion and Orpheus sat on the deck, Orpheus's head leaned against Dolion's shoulder with his eyes closed. "Is he asleep?" I asked quietly, sitting down next to them.

"Yeah," Dolion replied. 

"How long was I gone?" I asked.

"About a day. Only because it took Aisha that long to figure things out regarding your life in your world." It said softly.

"Aisha?" 

She walked up the porch stairs and sat beside me. Her dark skin shone and her azure hair blazed just like her eyes. 

"I thought all the engels besides Orpheus and Dolion were killed." I stated. 

"I wasn't dead, I was just... Helpless, really. I didn't intervene earlier even though I knew about the deer trying to destroy the universe. So I hid, in the sky realm. I couldn't do much, and that's why I involved you, Lavender. You're human but you're also so much more than that." She answered. 

"So... My world is what's real?"

"It's all real. Humans think their world is the only place that exists, and they're clearly wrong. But, the world you originated from - that's whats relatively real to you. Your body exists only in that world, so if you were to die there, you'd be dead in all the realms... And, to put it simply, your world is a parallel to this world. Kind of like an opposite reality."

"Why did you send me back there, after I saved everything here?" 

"So you would know the full truth. Without having to wake up in a coffin because people in your world decided you were dead."

"I don't care. I'd rather be here, forever." I looked over at Dolion's pretty face, and Orpheus's glowing blue eyes, which were now open, peering intently at me. I then looked back to Aisha. 

The sun sat upon beautiful colors in the sky, cradled in the giant fluffy clouds. No words could describe how good I felt here... I felt like my eternity would be spent in this place.