Into the Unknown

Chapter 1

ON THE SECOND FLOOR of the castle, Pink-White stepped out and breathed in his surroundings. 'It is a good day to be outside,' he sighed in thought. The flowers bloomed differently. He gazed down at the flower garden in the quadrangle. The daisies, roses, sunflowers opened to welcome the sun-kiss. Sound waves whispering cloyingly from the buzzing of the bees and little leaves as they slapped against each other.

Humming soulfully, he turned his back to the railing, leaning against it and through his nostrils, he let in the ambrosia from the roses. Closing his eyes for a nanosecond, his tune was engulfed by birds twittering. It was an enticing consummation to be taken away by nature. His mind traveled into the in-between—a place between now and his mind—for a moment, he could not do anything else but feel that is when he heard it. Something or someone was calling him. It sounded distant yet felt near.

"Pink-White, Pink-White..." a soft voice nudged at his calm mind like a little fire poker tickling the edges of a dying flame.

Had he fallen asleep? Or was he in a trance? One second, he was lost in the beauty of the atmosphere and the next he was hearing things. He heard the voice again but could not see where and whom it came from.

"Pink-White, I do not have much time. I may not do this with you ever again. Look at me now," the voice nudged on insistently.

When it insisted, Pink-White was able to recognize the voice, it was his mother's voice, Terese-White. He would know her voice anywhere but she had gone missing and he knew where she was, above all why she had gone. It was a place you left to when your immortal being could not exist on earth anymore, an aftereffect of the Gipus Curse. He was not ready to go there yet, so why was his mother here?

Had his mother come for him? Surely it was not time yet for him to die! Was it?

He had not died on a bewitching day such as this, had he? If not, then what was his mother doing here?

"Mom, how are you here? It is not possible. Am I dead?" he sounded panicked.

"No son, you are not dead. I do not have much time. Walk with me." She glided across the flowers that grew on the land, not crashing any as she floated over them.

Pink-White opened his mind to the surroundings. The colors had taken on a brighter tinge. Vivid. He tried to recognize the place, had he been here before? It looked like a place that one could only dream about—a sweet dreamy experience. The flowers were brighter as though more color had been splashed on their petals. Radiant. The sky too had a life of its own, vibrant with color. Was it possible for the sky to be any bluer? It was like the deep blue sea was floating above him and not the usual light blue skies. The clouds were breathing, churning as the wind turned them—swelling with each turn. Puffy.

His mother's voice snapped him out of his musings.

"There is something you must know and I thought to myself that what better day to tell you this than today when your heart is open and warm." As if to answer him, his mother swished her hands over the leaves on a tree standing in front of her. The tree reverberated like her tiny action had woken it up from a darling siesta. "Beautiful is it not, my son?"

"Yes, it is, mother. But where are we?" His patience was running thin because he was not sure why she was here. If it is his life that had come to an end, he needed to know that early enough. Maybe he could make a bargain with dear fate, if he understood why and where they were. "Why here mum? Where are we?"

His mind was working backwards asking the questions that had to be asked first last and those that should be last first. He did not beg to be excused. Anyone in his shoes would do the same.

"I did not want anyone to listen to our conversation so I brought you here. You do not know this place." Her eyes dancing over their surroundings, she gestured to him with a nod and continued, "Maybe you have visited it before in your dreams, I know it seems familiar to your eyes. It was your father's and my safe place. We would go into each other's minds when we wanted to be private about our thoughts and plans depending on who called out the other. This time I invited you. We are in your mind Pink..."

He was dumbstruck. The rest of her sentence disappeared with the line his thoughts had taken. Since that fateful night, his mother had never made any appearances not suddenly or foretold, ever! It was now that it occurred to him that he still felt hurt by what she had done. He asked the most logical thing that his mind could conjure up at the moment.

"Is everything alright mother?" He was not ready to bring up the sour topic, not when he had not fully healed.

"Yes, son it is. Everything is alright, at least it still is," she looked out into blank space thoughtfully before bending down to pluck on a scarlet rose.

The flower responded to her petting as though it still had its roots in the sunken ground it came from—the flower did not wither or lose its water. It bloomed in her hands as she simpered. She continued to walk to the tree in the far end. It was as though things and objects glided across the surface effortlessly not under the influence of wind but of their own volition. Pink-White found himself mindlessly imitating his mother's movements.

Next thing he knew they were sitting beneath a huge tree shade that swayed with the wind. The daffodils spread to pave way for clear land where Terese and Pink sat.

"What do you mean mother when you say 'at least it still is'? What are you trying to say? What is going on?" He was perplexed and believed that his mother would clear some of it by answering some of his questions.

"Oh, my son, too many questions and to them only a few answers can I give thee. A question at a time, time that we do not have." She sighed sadly. She knew Pink-White was terror-stricken by whatever she was telling him. Uncertainty and confusion marked the features of his countenance. She could see the way his throat bobbed up and down. Her boy was scared.

His glassy eyes gave away the fears he never voiced. 'Poor thing,' she thought. If he only knew what lay ahead. She was not in the place to tell him the whole truth which is why she went for a warning instead. Darkness was lurking in the shadows, their lives in danger but there was little she could do to save them, she had already done her sacrifice and where she was, her hands were tied. A warning would suffice, so she settled for that. Better half a loaf than no bread at all, right? It still didn't feel right.

"I do not understand Mother. What is all this? What are you trying to tell me?"

"It is why I summoned you here," she paused and scanned the encompassing mountain ranges, then looked back at her son, "Here... in calm unknown serenity, because a storm is coming."

"But the sky is clear mother; surely there cannot be a storm coming. By far, not today. It does not look so."

Why was she going around in circles when she herself had mentioned the time element? Did she not want to tell him?

"Just like your father, for a king so wise, you adamantly ignore the pain because it is better to look at the bright side." She lifted her skirts as she got off the ground. "Calm before a storm my child but like all storms, this too shall pass."

She strode away from him into the cotton clouds and faded away with them. Poof!

'He was a wise man, her son, he would figure it out at some point.' She thought as the clouds carried her away.

~*~

Pink-White returned from his reverie, he confirmed what his mother had meant when she said they were in his mind. His head hurt from such exertion and power usage. Till now he had not known such could be done with their immortal minds. Now he knew but before he could venture deeply into that thought his mother's last words bagged him.

*Snap! Snap! Snap! *

"Papaaa, papaaaa... the banquet..." his daughter, Shinja was standing right in front of him clicking her fingers upfront in his face.

Huh?

His back was still stuck to the railing as manner of pose. It had been in this exact posture that his mother had come to his mind. She mentioned a banquet.

Banquet? Which banquet?

Pink-White was still coming to from his encounter with the mother. Had it been a day already? Then it appeared to him that time had not passed for even a second. The encounter he had with his mother seemed to have frozen time on the other end of the world, in his mind, that is where it (the encounter) had occurred. In other words, it had been like a thought so no time had passed.

"Come on dad, the guests will be here soon." His daughter bagged impatiently.

When she mentioned guests, Pink-White's mind came back to the events that preceded his encounter with Terese, today is the day for the Elixir of Life celebrations. He was in charge of the banquet preparations and today they would receive the guest batches from different kingdoms meaning that the Silver kingdom would be in attendance soon. He had to get his head in the game otherwise he would mess up work he had put so much effort into.

His daughter did not give time to process whatever his mind was working its way around. She half-dragged, half-jogged him from the balcony pavilion that led through his bed chambers, into the hallway to her room. Instead of the pink streak of hair that went through his father's hair, Pink-White's entire head was ashen pink in color, in his eye sockets sat glassy eyes with golden irises stricken with a few black lines. He had a limp in his step that could easily be missed because of how straight his back stood on his thick thighs.

Evalene, his wife had given him the gift of five daughters, each older than the other by one year. The youngest of which was dragging him right now across the hallway, her name Shinja. She was twenty years old. Their eldest Shinka was twenty-five years old. They had chosen to have them spaced like that because of the mortal state of their mother Evalene Green. Marrying into a cursed family of immortals had costed her life, she died earlier than she would have if she had married a mortal being.

The Gipus Curse had robbed her of life because of it she faded away each passing day. In other days without the curse, Evalene would have gained immortality from her union with Pink-White Green. Unfortunately, for her, she married him after the curse had been cast upon the land. It was for love that she did it, choosing the love of her life over death. The days she would have spent with her husband, Pink-White, she decided to birth him five beautiful girls. She did not have a lot of time to nurture them but she tried her level best to ensure that they felt her presence for the few moments she was with them. She died while they were mere toddlers.

Pink-White was lost in thought when they finally made it into Shinja's room. The other sisters were jittery, pacing up and down, throwing clothes here and there. They did not notice Shinja enter with their father. She nudged her father onto the soft cushion by the window, he hit it with a plop, she turned to her closet pulling out a gown and placed it over her body.

"So, what do you think of this one papa?" she faced him expectantly, twirling with excitement that she could not contain. Her father was staring far away into the mirror like he saw something there and he had traveled to whatever it was. He worried his lower lip with his front teeth evidently inattentive to his daughter's fussiness.

"Papa come on!" she urged her father with a crestfallen expression on her face bothered by his inattention. Abruptly, Pink-White regained his composure back to what his daughter was showing him, eyebrows lifting to his hairline as if he was adjusting his eyes to what was standing before him.

"What? What? Oh yes, yes honey you look well... very beautiful, I must say. Splendid indeed!" He stared on blankly with a ghost smile plastered on his worn-out face. The scattered hairs on his brow gave away his exhaustion. Raising five girls on his own had taken a toll on him. He would never admit it to anyone how much it had taken out of him to raise them because he loved his daughters with every ounce of his old battered heart.

He had seen worse days; the death of his wife, father and disappearance of his mother, all of this in one lifetime. It seemed like an eternity. His girls gave him reason to keep going. Had it been a pigment of his imagination that his mother had come to him a while ago? But he was so sure that he had seen her, they had talked. She had been unclear though whatever it had been he would cogitate on her comments during the affair before it passed. She had said 'calm before a storm'.

An eerie thought swept across his mind that today was the calm, when the storm would break only time would tell.