#returnnovel

           I opened my eyes and felt hallow.

           I reached; searching, hoping, dreading.

           It was gone.  My magic, which flowed through my veins and burst from my fingertips, was gone.

           And the bed was too soft.  The room familiar yet strange.  This was not my room in Castle Leaoch.  This was my room back in….

           I sat up and threw off my covers.  It couldn’t be… I couldn’t be…  I pushed aside the curtain over the window.  I was staring into my backyard.

           I was back.

* * *

           It was the twenty-second of October and I was back. I had gone to sleep on the twenty-first and woken up in a different world.  And proceeded to spend three years saving a world that I might never see again.  And now it was like no time had passed, I was still fifteen, still a sophomore in high school.  Still had my whole life ahead of me.

           Except, I didn’t want this life.

           I stared at the mirror in the bathroom.  My eyes were still hazel and my hair was still black but my face was too round, too young, too soft.  This skin had not spent years under blistering sun and frigid wind.  Inge had once said my eyes looked hollow, like I was lost inside.  I looked empty now.  As empty as I felt without the energy zinging through my blood.  I couldn’t even pull a spark from the filament of my reading lamp.

           I brushed a thumb against my lips, they were warm and soft. These lips had never kissed.  I closed my eyes and rested my forehead against the mirror.  Aelis what are you up too, I thought.  Was she back in her world?  The last sight I’d ever have of her would be her smiling as she returned to her room; aqua eyes sparkling, honey orange hair tied into one long braid, her words, “Just think, Edmund, tomorrow you’ll be made a duke,” ringing.

           Just think, Aelis, I get to see my mother again.  Remember talking about them our first week in OtherWorld.  Just think Aelis, we’ll never see each other again. I thought I’d have time to say goodbye.