I had managed to pull myself off the floor and into bed at some late hour. I had cried myself to exhaustion, and fell asleep quickly. It was a blessing that I did. The last thing I had needed was a fitful night of tossing and turning. I slipped into unconsciousness easily though, and rested deeply until the bright rays of morning light streaming through the window woke me up. I remained in bed for a good long while after that. I heard Silas come in at some point to bring me my breakfast. I continued to stay in bed for another half hour. Eventually, I forced myself to get up. My breakfast was a slice of pumpkin pie. I thought this was strange considering it was late spring, but Silas definitely wasn't a normal man. Though I wasn't hungry when I began eating, my stomach growled loudly after the first few forkfuls went into my mouth. The salad last night had been delicious, but not particularly filling. I was still hungry when I finished my slice. I hoped Silas would bring me more food than the three main daily meals otherwise I would begin to riot. Thanks to my children, I have become accustomed to snacking throughout the day. To not be able to eat at my leisure would drive me crazy.
I mulled around by the table for quite some time. I didn't know when Silas was going to come to collect the plate. My boredom won over my desire to talk to him the minute he reappeared. Also, I desperately wanted to get outside. The weather seemed gorgeous, and I craved that slight bit of freedom the yard provided. I went over to the bookshelf to see what might be interesting to read. However, after a few moments of skimming through the titles I burst into laughter. Right in front of me was the answer to how Silas had been able to make this place so similar in appearance to the homes back in the elven lands. I would have to let him know what he had done whenever he did show up, because it was clear he was completely unaware of the nature of his decision. Shaking my head while still giggling a little, I picked a book. Then I sat on the couch outside to read. And I read that whole book. It was hard to be so entertained though, and then look up to see I was still contained in a beautiful prison cell. The characters in the book had so much available to them. I had little. I grew jealous, and a bit depressed again.
It was after moping about for a bit when an idea struck me. Silas had had the smarts to disconnect the internet, but perhaps I could still have some connection to the outside world through the television! I wouldn't be able to communicate with anyone. However, there was a good chance I could find out something about my own disappearance. A news station would surely make a report on my being kidnapped at some point. It was probably too soon for there to be one yet, but once ada was alerted to what had happened I knew he would kick up a storm. He would turn half the world over to find out where I had been whisked off to. With him being an elf and being in such a high position of influence, the humans would definitely latch onto the story with great interest. I could find out what had been discovered, a possible radius for my location, or even how close the police were to finding me...
...if Silas hadn't been the most proficient kidnapper in the world and thought of every detail beforehand. There were many channels, and I went through all of them. There was not a single news station. There was not a single show that would ever make any kind of news report at all. Most played nothing but movies or dramas. There was a little of everything- except for what I truly wanted. I tossed the remote on the floor, and watched some stupid cooking show as I knew if I even tried to move that I would throw a real fit.
The fury shifted into more depression, more hopelessness, more despair. I knew my pregnancy was not nearly far enough along to cause changes with my hormones, but I blamed my hormones anyway. I desperately needed some excuse. When I calmed down to the point where I no longer wanted to break everything in the room, I made my way back outside. I ended up by that glorified puddle again. Feeling suddenly exhausted, I rested against the grass as I stared up at the sky. It was a crisp shade of bright blue being disturbed here and there by the most wispiest of clouds one ever could imagine. The breeze pushing those clouds along was able to make its way down to me there on the ground. Little splashes caused by the laps of the pond reached my ears. The sky, the clouds, the sun, the sound of the water- it made me think back to my vacation. I closed my eyes, and the memories of that wonderful time flooded back to me. I felt free in that moment as I recalled everything. But, of course, all of my recollections wound up focusing on one particular person. For a brief moment, I truly did feel as if I was back on the beach lying against the sand with him next to me. Oh, how I wanted him to be next to me again! I sighed once more, and rolled onto my side.
And then he was there.
I froze. My heart missed several beats. I blinked furiously, certain what I was seeing would quickly vanish into nothingness. But he didn't. Wesley, appearing as he had during those summer day, simply smiled, wrapped his arms around me, and held me tight against him. The brief fear I had felt rapidly disintegrated. I pressed myself against him as firmly as I could. I grasped onto him with all my might. Tears fell when I felt that his heart was beating. His body was so warm- as if he actually had been lying on the beach all day. Neither of us spoke for several minutes. Only the gentle wind, the waves of the pond, the brushes of the tree leaves, and my soft crying were the sounds that wafted in the air.
I was furiously attempting to work out what was going on. At first, I thought I surely had to be going crazy. It would be the logical conclusion after I everything I had been through. Wesley was nothing more than an illusion created by my mind. After several more minutes passed, I concluded with confidence that he was an illusion. However, I realized he was not an illusion of insanity, but one caused by a dream. Some humans can dream lucidly- meaning they know they are dreaming. They can control what happens, and everything seems so vivid and realistic. Elves have something similar to lucid dreams- waking dreams. They occur when the mind is between consciousness and sleep. It is not possible to control them, but the experience remains vivid. What exactly is experienced stems from the person's desires and thoughts. I had been lying on the ground in exhaustion wanting to be next to Wesley. I had begun to fall asleep, and now here he was.
With that figured out, I fully relaxed against Wesley. It was incredibly strange to feel the heat of his body, the beat of his heart, the soft warmth of his breath, and the gentle tingle of his touch knowing he was nothing more than an image created by my mind. I stopped myself from believing for even a second that he was more than that. It would be much more heartbreaking to have him disappear when he did vanish. In fact, I soon tried to pull away from him. Knowing he wasn't there began stabbing my heart with the grief of his loss again. Wesley wouldn't let me go. He stroked my hair, and placed a kiss on the top of my head. I rested back against him despite that I was still reluctant. It wasn't a minute later when he surprised me by asking why I wanted to pull away. I had been certain he wouldn't have been able to speak.
He was dead, I told him. He had been for a long while now. This him that I was seeing was just me dreaming. When I woke up, he would be gone. A strange smile appeared on his face. It was true that he wouldn't be able to stay with me all the time, but was I just dreaming? Of course I was! His smile faded when I said that. I continued. When the dream stopped, I would return to being alone. When the dream, stopped, I would lose him once more- the only man who would ever love me and one of the dozens of those I cared about whom I would never be with again. My crying grew stronger. Wesley placed another kiss on the top of my head. His voice was stunningly cheerful as he spoke next, and what he said caught me entirely off-guard.
Being dead had allowed him to learn a lot of things. Wesley had discovered the answers to a lot of questions he had had, and the answers to questions he hadn't known he had. It had been a struggle to watch over me as us being separated caused him pain, and watching me suffer and not being able to do anything to help made everything worse. However, Wesley could help me now by telling me that I was wrong when I said he would be the only man who would love me. As he had believed when he was alive, there was that exception out there. Wesley now knew who he was, and he had been highly amused to realize just who it was. His voice grew somewhat envious then. The man who could be with me eternally would love me more strongly than he himself ever could. The love the man had for me actually already surpassed the love Wesley had given me. That made me confused. We had already met then? Wesley sort of shrugged. It could be said that we had met, but at the same time we really hadn't met either.
That obviously did nothing to clear up my confusion. I could only rationalize Wesley was talking about someone from my childhood- a boy I might have interacted with once but never paid attention to afterwards. There had always been so many people around me. Once I entered my late adolescence and early adulthood, I was constantly surrounded by noble sons amusingly fighting for my attention. If one having attraction for me had watched from a distance, there would have been no way for me to notice him.
However, my thinking was pointless if what Wesley had said was all a load of rubbish. And I honestly did consider all of it to be rubbish. Wesley was trying to make me believe that he was coming to me from the world beyond, but I re-convinced myself that I simply was dreaming. Dream Wesley was simply telling me what I wanted to hear. I have been concerned ever since having been given the task that no elven man would want me when I returned home. Now Wesley just happened to know everything about the man I was to supposedly marry? It seemed to be too much wish fulfillment for me to believe. Wesley suddenly vanishing when I went to touch his face gave me more evidence that I was right. My thinking had woken me up, and look at that- Wesley was gone. Not dreaming, huh?
Feeling sore from laying on the ground for so long, I absentmindedly took a strange sort of walk. I wandered about the perimeter of the yard before walking alongside the perimeter of the room inside before going back outside to repeat the process. Moving helped me keep my mind off my quickly growing boredom. Silas has provided me with much to entertain myself with, but I really wasn't used to being alone anymore. The last time I had been by myself was that day and a half before I met the Hatcher family on my vacation. Other than that, it has been centuries of me surrounded by my children and family. I don't like being by myself anymore. I crave having many others around me. Unfortunately, there was nothing I could do to remedy the problem. My walk grew tiring, and I sat myself down in the closest seat. It was the one for the chess table. I still hated chess, but after several minutes I began playing against myself just to keep myself preoccupied.
As it was, me playing chess opened up my mind to a way I might escape. It was only natural that I was reminded on Aneviel, Anemir, and Anadien while moving those little pieces around. My thoughts centered on how I had desperately tried to spend time with them and their eventual departure. Anadien's faint words floated to me from my memory. That was when I nearly flipped the chess table as realization hit me. Perhaps she could get me out of here! Anadien had told me she would watch over me. The aliens had always been watching me. Surely they would become aware of what had happened to me if they hadn't already become aware. Silas could keep me away from others, but he was just as helpless as I was against those beings from another world. It probably wouldn't take much for them to discover where I was. If Anadien came down with a ship, he could do nothing about it.
But would such a thing actually happen? What if Anadien wasn't allowed to come down? The thought of her not desiring to help me never crossed my mind. What if the aliens had finally stopped watching me? How could I catch their attention? I had a lot of doubts, but my boredom momentarily slipped away as I now had a bit of hope.
I eventually remembered I knew without a doubt that everyone back at home would be working hard to find me. I had only been here a day. I suppose after realizing I had no way of escaping myself that I had foolishly begun to believe that I actually was stuck in this place. My family needed more than the approximately twenty-four hours I had given them to find information and piece everything together. Calming myself down after my moment of excitement, I went inside as a light drizzle began to fall from the sudden gray clouds that had appeared. Not desiring to do much, I rocked in the rocking chair placed in the corner of the small nursery area. The gentle, swaying motion helped me keep my head. I stared at the crib again. Thankfully, it did not set me off as it had the previous evening.
In fact, I began to become greatly curious about the child. There was always the old questions to address. Would it be a boy or a girl? Would I be having multiples again? Who would he, she, or they take after? I hoped the child or children would take after me as I obviously wasn't very fond of Silas at the moment. I wasn't too worried about our child developing his less than likeable tendencies. After all, Eleme had been nothing like Mr. Clemens. Consumed by my curiosity, I stood up and tried to estimate with my hands my belief of how large my stomach would grow this time. My instincts told me I would be having a slightly larger boy, but I was just as convinced I was having a smaller girl. I hoped for a girl as the number of boys I have had was still decently higher.
When Silas brought me my lunch, I was aghast. Not because the food was undesirable, but because I realized it was only lunchtime. It felt to me as if the day should be over instead. If one morning had passed this slowly, I couldn't imagine how horrible an entire week or a month would be. Silas returned shortly after I finished eating to collect my plate and ask how things were going. I tried not to complain too much as I needed to keep his attitude pleasant. My request for some snacks and more books was asked though. The snacks were fine, but Silas was confused about the request for more books. The bookshelf he had provided was almost full. I couldn't possibly have read through all of them already. A large smile appeared on my face. But I had, I told him. All but two of the books he had provided were the ones I had written. Silas was confused until I revealed I had always used a pen name when publishing my works. He started to laugh after that. He had bought those specific books as they had contained stories about elves, so his assumption had been that I would instantly like them. I had noticed during my browsing that most of my books had been my earlier ones where I had been mixing fiction into the otherwise honest tales of my people. I had also included much detail about the architecture back home, which was why Silas had been able to make my room so accurate to what I knew.
He promised to bring me a new batch soon enough.
His return didn't come until dinner. I was given a hearty plate of spaghetti this time around. As usual, my kidnapper barely said a word before disappearing to the place that was on the other side of the door. I took my meal outside to eat at the table there. The afternoon had passed even more slowly than the morning had. I had preoccupied myself by watching television, starting a journal using the word processor on the computer, and taking another "walk." Perhaps it was a good thing I wasn't able to eat when I wanted. With no real way to exercise here, I would surely begin to gain weight otherwise. A few points of interest popped into my mind while eating that broke through my boredom. Mostly I wondered exactly where Silas and I were. Was this place close to Twinbrook? I had a feeling it wouldn't be. Were we close to any town at all? I could hear nothing but the sounds of nature outside the wall. I thought to look up. There was no light pollution in the night sky. We were definitely far away from anyone.
I then stared at the spaghetti. How was Silas providing the food? Had he built up a large store of supplies? I couldn't imagine him making trips to the market now that he would be sought after by the police. He wouldn't be that foolish. Could he possibly have someone else working with him? I sort of believed that. Silas, despite his obvious delusions and disconnect from reality, was smart. He would know that he couldn't pull this all off on his own. It also wasn't as if he had built this place by himself. Someone else must have done the work, and it had to have been someone he trusted. As soon as the news reports started going on about a kidnapped elf woman, any normal contractor might begin to suspect the man who had ordered an elven type room with a large barrier wall surrounding the yard.
The night grew late as I sat there pondering everything over. Still, I wearied not. I hadn't done enough to wear myself down to the point where I felt like sleeping. I went inside to take another bubble bath to hopefully lull me to sleepiness. While about to get in, I caught a glance at the large bruise on my left leg. Silas truly had gone at it will all his might. The coloring of the bruise made me somewhat nauseous, so I quickly stopped paying attention to it. I knew it would go away soon enough, and it thankfully didn't hurt too much anymore. I think I remained in that bath even longer than I had the previous evening. The water and bubbles were relaxing- making me dread getting out.
My curiosity about attracting the aliens' attention lured me out of the washing room though. I stood out under the stars staring at them for a long time. I again wondered if I was being watched, how then could I make my desires for escape known? Should I jump about like a lunatic hoping to catch their notice? I did no jumping, but I did wave my arms furiously towards the sky for a while. I went to use the telescope when arm waving had no obvious results. I wasn't aware how using it would help me, but I figured I could have the chance of spotting some sort of evidence that those people actually were out there. Having no real experience using the telescope, however, meant that I barely had any idea what I was looking at in the first place. There was no way I would have been able to recognize signs of alien presence.
I stayed out there trying for an hour though. Then the gray clouds reappeared, and the light rain began to fall once more. I attempted to sleep then, but gave up after five minutes. My mind refused to shut down. My interested turned towards the violin. My fingers were itching to play again. Bothering Silas or waking him up was the last concern on my mind. I played as loud and as long as I desired. I closed my eyes to pretend I was back home performing whatever new song I had learned for ada and naneth. However, I stopped pretending when I opened my eyes and the negative surge of emotion from that morning came once more to my chest. Escaping to a pretend world didn't help. Everything only became worse when it stopped and I was brought back to reality. The negative feeling eventually overtook me, and I was forced to stop playing.
I changed into my nightgown, but didn't bother getting under the sheets as I lay myself down on the bed. It was clear sleep would not be my companion, and that I would get up multiple times during the evening. However long I laid there was lost on me. My mind began to ache from me trying to coax myself to rest. The pain reminded me of the horrible headaches I used to get from tending to Aewen, Alcarien, Delerith, and Delindir. That made me think about my sets of twins and how they might be reacting to my disappearance, Recalling my children only made my head ache worse. I was about to give up on sleep entirely when the pain had an unexpected effect.
The pain grew so unbearable that my mind began to instinctively numb itself to escape. My own brain was beating itself unconscious. I didn't stop what was happening. Even if it wasn't true sleep, passing out was the next best thing. And yet, something even more unexpected happened. A worried and concerned presence suddenly appeared next to me. Strong arms wrapped themselves around me, and I was pressed against the person's body. I feared for a moment Silas had been hiding under the bed or something all this time, but I quickly realized who was actually there. My brain had slipped away enough to allow Wesley's return. With his touch and resumed petting of my hair, I began to calm. The pain subsided, and it wasn't long before real sleep took hold of me instead......
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