LAMIAE

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT: DREAMS AND NOTES

Something doesn't seem right here, Dagmara thought to herself, flipping through the notebook again, as if expecting that she had missed something and this time the content would become visible to her eyes. After a few minutes, however, she gave up. She groaned loudly, lying down on the bed, with the diary in her hands.

She stared at it for so long that she finally felt weariness. Subconsciously, she still thought that maybe, since the world was not as ordinary and predictable as she thought, it would give her one more surprise and show her the rest of the notes.

She had a strange dream, although it couldn't be related to the diary in her arms.

The women danced around the fire, laughing and joking among themselves. Each one was ugly, each had some damage to their health and body. Fractured bones, pimples, bent fingers, black teeth, lame and those with dentures. No pieces of flesh and with plucked hair, warts, itching, moles. Every disease in the world could be found there, really every disease...

She was in the basement, all alone. She was afraid because someone was about to come. Someone wanted to hurt her, to punish her, even though she had done nothing wrong. She heard the shuffling of shoes, he was already close...

The world was blurring and shaking. It felt like it was both stretching and shrinking just to specifically make her nauseous. Her head was spinning. spinning. Images were changing their shapes and colors like in a kaleidoscope. She felt bad and would do anything to make the world just stand still. She heard some voices. Voices that later turned into only one, but her head throbbing with pain effectively prevented her from finding out who was its owner...

She was over a cliff, looking down. She knew she didn't look like herself, with light, blonde hair, straight as wires, as if she had just left the hairdresser's. She had very bright blue eyes and she wanted so much to resemble her old self...

And again her head throbbed with a dull, stabbing pain. She was still swaying on her feet, clutching at something in front of her. Her problems suddenly didn't matter anymore. The world changed in just a few seconds. Everything that had once held her attention was now limited to three words. It is over...

And once again. She was sitting in the kitchen of the residence in the dark; motionless and clueless looking ahead. Someone else was present, but everyone present was equally devoid of the will to live. Deprived of the power to fight. Even Tie left his half-drunk milk, sitting down on his paws as if waiting for orders. But no one could give it to him...

"Get up, little one," Casper's voice came to her, causing her to open her eyes hastily, like a fugitive being chased and who didn't expect that they had caught up with him now.

When external stimuli reached her, she concluded that she must have fallen asleep. Casper stood over her, looking animatedly at the notebook she held in her hand.

"It's after midnight, so I wasn't supposed to wake you up, but you fell asleep with your clothes on," he started to explain, although his eyes were still focused on only one point.

She estimated that she must have slept for about ten hours, but she was more concerned with the fact that Casper must have seen Victoria's diary at some point. He and the girl were friends, and he certainly knew that she kept a journal. Dagmara found herself in a bind, wanting as much to show it to him and ask about the note inside as to hide it in a drawer so he would never find it.

What will he think of me?

She began to wonder, while trying to cover the notebook with her other hand. Even if she told him the truth, that she had found the diary, not stolen it, it didn't explain why she was lying with the diary in her arms.

Casper straightened up.

"I see you also keep a diary," he said with obvious sadness on his face. "Victoria ran a similar one, but I think it had a different cover."

She felt so stupid that her face probably turned red. Casper must not have noticed it, however, because after a moment he added more confidently:

"I don't want to sound like a dirt-allergic daddy, but next time, go wash yourself and then jump into bed. Besides, you came home alone for the second time, we need to talk about it in the morning," he walked to the door, already stretching his hand towards the doorknob, when he remembered something else. "And I managed to contact auntie. She'll be back in the morning", he finished, and then walked out briskly, closing the door behind him.

Dagmara made a sound of regret. Not only was she silent when she should have been speaking, and her grandmother would be returning soon.

She couldn't figure out why this news upset her, maybe because it was delivered to her by Casper? That she should have been told by her grandmother? Or maybe she just didn't have the slightest desire to see Genevieve after she left without even mentioning it to her?

She was so angry that she threw the diary into the corner of the bed, as far away from her hands as possible. Unfortunately, the notebook fell on the floor, opening to a written page.

Annoyed at her clumsiness, she picked up the diary. She involuntarily glanced at the text, but before she could enjoy what she saw, she rubbed her eyes to make sure.

The words she caught she had certainly not read before. She absentmindedly turned the page earlier, but from where she had found the first note, the text had not disappeared, it was still there, starting with the same sentence. It was a bit like another piece of content had been revealed after her dream.

The note from the second day read:

Yesterday everything became clear. I am who I am, but I was born to be who I will become in a few months. I am not frightened by this fact, the signals I felt were already unbearable. The uncertainty whether I was different or everyone else had been nagging at me since the moment I first picked up the porcelain white swan, and it came to life in my hand.

The thesis that I put forward yesterday, that the world has changed, has today faded into nothingness. It wasn't the world that changed, it was me who discovered a part of it. Just as there are two opposing forces - love and hate, two opposing concepts - good and evil, there are also adjectives human and inhuman. Human is everything that comes from people, that men and women have invented for centuries; what they became creators of. The inhuman is the supernatural, which was created long ago by another Creator. It's not just Earth. These are powers that these humans have not heard of and that have been protected from them for the centuries.

Since we live in what is human, we are not yet able to understand everything. But if I were to think about it more deeply, I cannot imagine living seventeen years in knowledge and waiting for the powers that lie dormant within me to finally awaken.

Genevieve is right. Genevieve is the wisest person I know. She explains that a girl who lives her life the way she wants and knows best will appreciate what is still waiting for her. A girl who knew from birth who she would be in the future would feel singled out throughout her life, more important than others.

They do. A friend does. And although he is a wonderful person, a devoted soulmate and a valuable person, I cannot downplay the fact that he feels better than others. When he runs a red light, he doesn't go to school, when he lectures me that he knows something that I'm only just about to find out.

I saw him and he saw his friends. Apparently they made an agreement that they would help each other. It's just that... I don't know. One of them still carelessly looks at the years ahead of him, and the other, as if on the contrary, has everything figured out, but he doesn't include us in his plan. They are so young. That's why I don't trust them like my friend does. I would like to, but I can't. On this final day, I don't see their faces next to mine. Their arms next to mine. Their sides by my side.

It will be just my friend and me. There will only be us two left, facing the twelve of them. Just the two of us facing the Council members.