A Familiar Oddity

'Mother? I'm still hungry.'

"Please stop," Harris whimpered.

'Mama, can I still have more? I'm still starving.'

"Stop. . . Stop. . ."

'Mama! I'm hungry. . .so hungry!' the girls' voice in Harris' head screeched, giving her a splitting headache that would've been mistaken for her skull cracking.

'Mama! I'm hungry. . . So hungry!'

"Please, I beg you. Make it stop!" She continued to plead. Anything to stop the pain. Yet she was powerless against the onslaught of want for more food from the person in her head.

'So hungry, it isn't enough!'

'So hungry, it isn't enough!'

'So hungry!'

'It isn't enough!'

"STOP!!!" a blood curdling scream went past her pink lips. Tears flooding in luscious water streams stained her reddened cheeks. Her eyes were tightly sealed. Palms firm as it covered her ears, whilst her fingers were gripping her hair so harsh it burned her scalp.

"Harris! Harris! Dear God, what's wrong? What's happening, Shaun?!" Cassia manically screamed over her hunched down cousin. Her shaking irises, accompanied by her panicking state of mind made everything so hard to move and rationalise her racing thoughts.

"She must've been too overwhelmed," Shaun cursed, his hands trying to pry away Harris' hands from her ears, gently yet with as much strength he could. "I knew it would result to worst, yet I did it without any regard. I shouldn't have done that. It fueled her already storming mind,"

"Harris! Harris listen to me." He called with a grunt. Her hands were clawing her ears, crimson now evident as drops of it cascaded and ruined her attire.

"Shaun! Please help her. Help Harris! Guards! Lord Rowan!" Cassia was now ugly hollering for people, especially the royal magician. They were the only ones to register in mind in mid of her fit of worrying for her cousin.

'This I ask you to keep'

'We met again'

'This I ask you to keep!'

'We met again!'

"Stop. Please stop, it's too much. Too much." Harris fell on a sobbing mess.

The ground beneath her vanished, replaced with unending angry waves of the ocean. Those horrific voices continued to fill her ears, practically screaming and forcing the words for her to hear. It was terrifying and agonizing.

Too much.

Clouds, now an ugly grey covered the serenious skies. Flashes of lightning adorned the once holy heavens, paired with drums of thunder that brought goosebumps to her skin. It was as if the gods were wrathful. And she was the person they wished to unleash their negativity on.

The cacophonous voices never ceased. Harris swore she would rip her ears the longer it took. Her scalp had been burning too from her death-clutch. Her nails unknowingly planting crescents that dripped crimsons now added to fuel the pain.

Her head was throbbing too. It was like being pierced thoroughly with a gazillion of prickly needles, at the same time hammered and cracked open. The screams became more earsplitting than it did seconds ago, therefore had her clawing her ears whilst she whimpered and pleaded for it to halt.

Then suddenly, she heard a splash. The voices halted. Her ears now freed from the onslaught of pleads, of secrecy, of winter meetings. All she heard was white noise, a static that was very comfortable than the latter noise.

"Harris. . ." Someone called, and she feared of what would happen next. She feared that it would be the same cacophonous voices that ravaged her mind. She had almost thought that she was in brink of going mental.

It wasn't pleasing. None in the least.

"Harris. . . Harris!"

"Please don't. . ." She uttered, however, once her mouth parted open. A rush of water came and choked her. Harris' throat burned, and her hands now flew to hold her throat.

She was drowning.

And she couldn't scream for help.

"Harris, dear, embrace it." A woman commanded in a motherly tone.

Was she foolish? The woman. Harris was practically drowning and here she was, telling her to embrace whatever this madness was? She was just off for a luncheon, yet she was rewarded with all these agonizing voices, thoughts, and everything surrounding her.

"You're absolutely mental." Harris wanted to utter, yet her burning lungs depraved her of ever inhaling oxygen and from doing so. She could only sputter gurgles as her nose flared by water mistaken with fire.

Grape-like vines of kelp crept slowly on her legs as well as arms immobilising her. She could feel a thicket of it surrounding her waistline, some even on her neck. Yet it was just holding her. Not doing anything akin to choking the air from her lungs, squeezing her body till it carved red rashes on her skin. She was still underwater though.

"I told you to embrace everything. Let it fall into pieces." Now the voice was hissing. Clearly agitated by her lack of obedience. Heck, why should she obey anyway? This person was probably the one who started the noise.

"Harris! Don't, whatever anything you hear, don't head and don't do as it wanted you to!" Alarming and frantic, it was the voice who told her a winter weird greeting. At the same time she heard him, the kelp around her began to tighten themselves, pain now picking her skin.

"Foolish boy! You're a menace! You never ever stop do you?!" The voice of a woman, echoed and harmonized with something probably surreal. It was like it was a person morphing into another, wholely different individual. But instead of a woman's, it was replaced of a man's.

"Shut it, Juvelynthesia. Learn where you stood."

"Oh, and what would you do, dear brother? Curse me in the deepest depths of the ocean? Let brother Oceanux seal me with an ancient rune? Funny." The menacing man boisterously laughed, finding his situation funny.

"You were cursed for a reason! You and your evilness." The other seethed. He was protective of her. So much she could feel as if the one opposed to the evil person was hugging her form and shielding her from scorching darkness.

He was. . .light itself in her view.

Literally light. The tight kelp surrounding her was cut loose, letting her body float in bubbles. She could feel something shift and something pulled her away from the depths of ocean agony. She could hear someone faintly scream, a scream that resembles people burned on a stick in front of a crowd.

"I was cursed due to your selfish desires!"

Had she made a quick visit to hell? Is hell even located underneath the water? Very unlikely.

"You did well, Harris." Lovingly, someone caressed her damp hair, and she absolutely wanted to open her eyes. See for herself, her saviour. Yet it was too heavy to pry, and she was practically succumbing to fatigue.

"W-who are you?" She managed a hoarse whisper. She hoped that it would reach her saviour's ears. Though she was only responded with silence. A defeaning one.

He. . .left her?

"You'll know soon."

Harris shot up from laying down, her hair and body damped with water. Her body rattled in cold air, and she was practically shivering. It was real. Everything that happened was real.

She winced at the sting from both her ears, her scalp burned that made her recall the voices. Those voices that made her head split into two. Her gaze travelled down her arms, and she shakily lifted them up only to pale at the sight of red embellished skin.

The kelps were real. She was indeed prancing with death moments ago. What the hell happened?

She left the view of her arm, not liking how the red appeared so dominant in her ivory tone. Instead, she began to scan the room that she was in.

Her bedroom.

How did she ended up in her bedroom?

And that's where she realized how she was sitting on top of a canopy of lavender colored sheets, on her fluffy matress and was clad in a nightwear she owned which sleeves are ripped and was tossed on the carpeted floor (she saw them a few second ago).

Three consecutive soft knocks punctured the silence of the vicinity. Though her throat was too hoarse and scratchy to utter two simple words. It wasn't like the person behind was waiting either, because the door opened after the act of knocking— revealing someone truly foreign yet agonizingly familiar.

Glittering bloody ruby that was so dark it could be mistaken as obsidian, a mop of curly black hair parted on the side that stubbornly fell to its desired direction. A snippet of yellowish-grey and periwinkle appeared in her head, though quick as it left. The boy was holding a tray with a pitcher of water and an empty glass.

"You're awake. That's good," the boy muttered, walking in with elegant and refined steps towards the left side of her bed. He placed down the tray on the nightstand, pouring in a glassful of water for him to offer to her. "You gave us quite the scare. Your cousin literally almost had a cardiac attack."

"Who are you?" Hoarse and throaty, she questioned. That voice. . . Was it weird to assume that this person and her saviour had the same voice? Or was her mind playing unplayful and harsh tricks again.

"Here. Drink." He gave her water. To which she had chugged down in an unladylike manner. She badly needed the hydration, and she would've love to have actual drinkable water that was harmless— unlike the wrath of the ocean.

"Who are you?" Harris questioned once again, her tone now laced slightly with pleading desperation.

"Is that how you greet guests?"

"Please, just. . .just answer my question and don't answer my question with a question as a response." She hissed, an uncharacteristic thing that she secretly does whenever annoyed and thirsty for certain answers that was never displayed to her at the first two queries.

"Feisty. Just like old."

"Leave if that's all—"

"Shaun. . ." He whispered, barely for her to hear.

Harris scrunched her brows, "What?"

"Shaun," the boy hesitated for a moment, before muttering a name that wove crystalline threads on her heart before pulling it, squeezing the muscle tight.

"Shaun Februs Xereisee."