The Air Out Of [Wattys2018 shortlist]

08

LEO ISN'T SURE THAT THE SHOCK HAS EVEN SETTLED IN before Aspyn's mother continues blabbering about continuous nonsense about how thankful she is that her lucky stars had turned in the right direction.

"Pardon?" He asks. "Did you say, heroes."

To his left, Aspyn sucks in a forced breath. Her hands rest against the crinkles of her clothes while she attempts at avoiding eye contact. To him, it made absolutely no sense. Since when where they expected to arrive, let alone be the heroes of a place they've never heard of.

"Of course." She smiles, revealing a few creases and wrinkles around her eyes. "Only a lavine can spot the bright light of the pearl," Her laughter is soft like a continuous melody played on a harp, "Which one of you spotted it?"

"I did," Jess raises her hand timidly, gaining the attention of everyone in the room. She seemed slightly taken aback by the attention focused on her so almost instinctively, she retracted her hand.

"You must help us," The Queen notices that Scar is wearing the anklet, and nods in agreement, then turned her attention to the necklace on Jess' neck. Leo watched as the necklace took on a slight tint of pink as the Queen gazed fiercely into it.

Leo winces.

"Covia is in grave danger," She sighs, her free hand placing her crown on a nearby pillow stacked atop a post, then letting her weight balance on a nearby pillar, leaning against it in a limp manner. She no longer looks like the dashing queen she was when they had entered, and instead looked beyond frail as she moved to position herself on the throne, at her throne room. "Aspyn." She motions for her daughter to explain while she faces a severe headache.

Aspyn clears her throat "Recently, my mother, ruler of Covia has been facing several illnesses and of course, since my father is long gone, I am the rightful heir of Covia and set to inherit it, in due time." Aspyn looks at Jess subduedly, "However, my mother's younger brother who was banned from royalty for committing an endless stream of crimes, as stated by our sources, is planning to nab the throne around the time of my coronation, by instigating a war cry to attack from the inside. In fact, he's come much to close to the hidden entrance to Covia."

Leo and Jess both exchange wary glances.

"The light of the pearl was a test, to eliminate tons of possibilities," Aspyn says. "Jess, if you managed to see it, you are something entirely special."

Leo's mind was racing as he watched a petrified Jess try to cope with everything Aspyn had even managed to say. But in all honesty, Leo was more than confused. It was true that Jess had been the one to spot the light and swim to it, but when she had brought them to it, everyone saw the light too.

Maybe it was simply a chance of timing of who happened to be at the right place at the right time.

But for Jess to see the light from that distance, maybe that was how Aspyn came to the conclusion that her eye was gifted of some sort. His mind couldn't comprehend. Aspyn said that the pearl was a test, but if someone had coincidentally been near the pearl and saw the light just like he had when led right to it by Jess, would they have been considered a lavine? A hero?

He opened his mouth to speak, but decided against it. He stood next to Scar, who seemed to be thinking the same thing. Jess, on the other hand, was frozen in place, and her mind, in another world.

But she's a quick thinker, "I-I think it's best if we," she pauses trying to find the perfect combination of words, to not offend, but convey the group's mutual message, eventually deciding on, "Have time to process all this."

Or in other words, no one was willing to commit.

"Of course." Aspyn says, "Covian and Earth time works parallel to one another, after all, they are parallel universes, so you need not worry about being away for a century, and et cetera."

Aspyn walks over to her mother's side, who is rubbing her temples and squinting at the light. Looking back at us one last time, she gives us a sympathetic smile and waves us a small goodbye before scurrying back to her habitual routine. Soon, Jess reaches for his pearl on her necklace and presses the button on the backhand side of the pearl instantly transporting us all back to the cove we once were in.

Leo feels the water flushing right back into his face, the moment of realization that he is, in fact, back on Earth. Which is supposed to be normal, yet it feels anything but. No one moves, locking their eyes on the crystal ball, whose light is no longer being shone in every direction.

Leo's finds himself running out of air, oxygen, whatever. Really, really fast.

But after a life-changing out of this galaxy experience in an underwater colony in a different galaxy, with tainted water molecules which allowed him to breathe, he half-expected to be able to regulate his breathing, eventually.

It didn't happen. He sucked in a tight breath only to realize his mistake almost instantly. Swimming upwards as quickly as possible, Leo turns a slight shade of blue. Come on, come on! Reaching the surface, he took a large gasp of air.

"That was a lot to take in." Ellie finally speaks, while Leo coughs up the water he had just inhaled in the background.

"What do we do." He says to the group as his feet meet the foreign feeling of the ground, sand. The water was no longer carrying them everywhere, instead, the whoosh of air reminded them where they were.

"Why don't we take a break, let our thoughts process on its own. We can have the discussion tomorrow." Leo hears Scar say, "It's late anyway."

It was late. The sky was no longer a bright, blue sky. Instead, it seemed more like a black one.

He couldn't sleep. Twisting, and turning under his sheets. His mind was awake and had already come to a conclusion and an entire reasoning behind this decision. The silent thought drilled his mind. He needed to save this place, seeing the bright light had made him feel like a leader, a person that had mattered, or at least made a difference to society, and with the millions of lives in Covia that hung on balance, his decision was made before they had even left.

They were a team now.

Outcasts get no opportunity to shine, to feel their importance or stance in the world. Yet he had been given one, graciously.

A chance to change the future of Covia, and it wasn't a debate between taking it or leaving it. It was whether they started now or later.