The Thousand Year Time-Out

      Caylis awoke from a refreshing night's sleep. From the tips of her webbed ears to the caudal fin of her periwinkle-blue tail, the Aisha's body was relaxed, yet full of energy. She could have whirled out into the ocean like a spring, but she lay still, enjoying the feeling of water flowing through her gills. She gazed at the dim light that filtered through the murky waters, at the lazily drifting strands of kelp overhead. Nothing interrupted this moment for her. She was at peace. She was calm.

      Why was she at peace? How could she be?

      Caylis jerked and wrestled her tail out of her sleeping bag. She took stock of her surroundings, perplexed by the eerie quiet that filled her mind. The nightmares, the omens, all the cataclysms that had plagued her sleep and haunted her memories since she was a little girl, where had they gone? She could not suddenly be cured from her curse. Could she?

      She cast her thoughts back to the previous night when she had searched for a safe place to anchor her sleeping bag. Many dangers lurked at the bottom of the sea for those who did not have a city in which to hole up. Unlike the people of Maraqua, the Chasm Beast could not care less about Caylis's visions of doom. She was welcomed into its maw any time.

      Last night, Caylis had waited in the wake of a few large fish, observing their path, before slipping into a corner of the ruins that they had avoided. It was an empty area, devoid of sea life for them to hunt, even in the nooks and crevices that could have hosted many an eel between the fang-like rock formations.

      On the other side of the rock formations, Caylis found the statue.

      The statue was of a land-dwelling faerie, those with two legs instead of a scaly tail, and two large fins sticking out from their backs. Caylis had seen some in the picture books that she used to read with her sister, before the Whirlpool.

      The heavy jewel chained to the statue's neck seemed like an ancient design. If anything else had fallen to the bottom of the sea with the statue, it had long since been reduced to rubble. She must have been there for ages. And yet, she stood clean and unmarred for all to see. No weeds, no shells clung to her, no molluscs oozed over her, nor even around her. As if nothing dared to live in her shadow.

      Cautious, Caylis took another glance around before swimming up to the statue. The faerie's features were twisted into an expression of the purest unhinged fury and desperation even Caylis could imagine.

      "Girl, if that isn't a mood," the lone Aisha told the statue.

      If anything had cured her curse, it certainly wasn't that faerie. It was only a statue, anyway. Caylis had to stop thinking of her as anything more than a block of stone. If the sea beasts avoided this area, maybe it was bad news, after all.

      The next evening, after scavenging for her meal, Caylis returned to one of her other haunts to spend the night. It took her a while to fall asleep.

      If the nightmares had stopped, if her curse really was over, then everything would change, wouldn't it? Her life would never be the same as it was before the Whirlpool, before the nightmares. When she'd had a family.

      But in New Maraqua, people had formed new families. They had welcomed her sister, and given her a new life. Against all reason, Caylis was poking at old scraps of hope that she had dropped many years ago.

      She wrenched herself awake, reeling from recurring images of Neopians fleeing destruction. She was a wreck. It was Tuesday. Caylis got up without complaining. She was used to her horrors. She had long given up on trying to block them or staying awake. They may be terrible, but at least, they never let her down. They were her own horrors to bear, and she would keep them in her brain where they belonged, and she would like it.

      She was distracted throughout the day. Her thoughts kept returning to the statue, the rage in her eyes. Caylis tried to imagine what she had seen across the ages. Or rather, what had happened around her, because statues could not see.

      As she wandered in search of food and tools to fend for herself, she kept circling the area. It was barely sunset when she made up her mind and swam back to the statue.

      Caylis settled right across from her this time, gazing at her while falling asleep.

      Her eyes snapped open in the dead of night. She heard nothing but the ambient pressure of water. It had happened again. Her mind was empty, free of nightmares, as peaceful as this part of the Ruins. It had to be the statue. In this eerie quiet, Caylis wondered what fate could have befallen this faerie, why she could not see her tragedy in her dreams.

      "You cannot see what calamity would befall me, because I am the worst that could happen. I have simply not yet decided how to make it happen."

      The voice had rung as clearly as if a person was floating in the waters and addressing Caylis, but it could only have come from the statue. It sounded husky and suave, with a hint of the kind of tenderness that could only mean bad news. She could not imagine any other voice coming from this faerie.

      "You can talk," Caylis told the statue, stunned.

      It did not reply. The voice had sounded fuzzy, a bit strained on the last words.

      "Well, if you're a catastrophe too, why don't you come and join the club inside my brain? I already see a lot of you, so what's one more," Caylis suggested, feeling stupid. "Either that, or I ate something funny and I will have a cool fever dream."

      Despite her misgivings, the Aisha took the time to focus on the image of the faerie before going back to sleep.

      Caylis's dreams had always been hyperrealistic, throwing her into finely detailed scenes of places where she had never been and would never go, so that she could witness their destruction all the more clearly. In this new dream, she floated only in darkness. She did not have to wait long.

      The faerie emerged from the darkness. She resembled the statue in every way, and she wore indigo tones exactly as Caylis had imagined them. Her wild dark hair was streaked with deep blues and her wide eyes flashed in vivid crimson and gold.

      "What an interesting mind," said the faerie, her silky voice full of eagerness. "So young, yet capable of contacting me through a spontaneous mental link." She stood with her hands on her hips, seeming to appraise the Aisha.

      Caylis appraised her right back. She was not even in the top fifty scariest things Caylis had dreamed of. Just because a faerie appeared in her dreams didn't make her special.

      "You got a name, lady?"

      "I have had too many names," said the faerie, unperturbed by the Aisha's surly tone. "'Lady' will do nicely for now."

      "Seriously though, is it you that's stopping my nightmares?"

      "Not voluntarily, I assure you. The power of my presence, even in my petrified form, is nullifying them temporarily."

      "But you just decided to pop into my dreams anyway?"

      The faerie shook her head. "You are not dreaming. You are communing with me mentally. In all the time I have sat on this wretched seabed, little one, not a single other being has shown this power. You can see the world for what it is, and that is why you were cast out."

      Around them, the darkness vanished, suddenly filled with a light that glimmered off white marble buildings and spires in sunny gardens. Caylis felt an urge to blink. Even while swimming closer to the surface, she had never seen anything so bright.

      The faerie took Caylis through the city and into a great hall where a council met. Their surroundings blurred and shifted to match her recollections.

      "I remember how each of these streets was built. I protected this land and watched over them the whole time. I was one of them. But I could always see the darkness in them. Their flaws, their downfalls. I, too, could always predict a disaster before it came. And that is why I could no longer be one of them. I was cast out."

      The city, moving at high speed in a blur around them, was shrouded in dark clouds. The faerie watched it dispassionately. They were surrounded by warring factions in battle. The scene was much fuzzier than Caylis's vivid prophetic dreams, but the pattern was only too familiar to her. How strange it was to imagine a powerful faerie suffering the same rejection she had.

      Eventually, the scene focused. A land Aisha cast spells, followed by a regal purple faerie. There was a brilliant flash of light, and they were back in an underwater landscape, identical to the one where Caylis had settled for the night, with the only difference being a live faerie instead of a statue.

      "There is no point in delaying the inevitable," said the faerie.

      Her face held none of the fury of her petrified form. Caylis thought she looked more like a statue now.

      The faerie turned to her. "You would know. I have shown you my past. What have you to show me? You, a child who witnesses the misery of the world every night?"

      Caylis frowned. "Lady, my brain may be cursed, but I'm no magical girl. I can't beam my dreams into your brain instead - believe me, I would be doing that to a whole lot of people if I could."

      The faerie quirked one of her already arched brows. "I never order something outside a follower's capacities. That is a waste of time." She watched Caylis more attentively, then leaned in and gently took the Aisha's face between her hands. "The potential is all within you. Copy the mental link I've formed with you. Show me what I have missed during my imprisonment. Show me what has already befallen, so that I know what could be worse."

      She said this not as a command, but with utter confidence that it would happen. Caylis felt herself drifting, like on those days when she had no will to do anything and left herself at the mercy of the ocean currents.

      This was the first restful dream she had enjoyed in so many years. Why would she purposefully return to her usual nightmares?

      The faerie had not been wary of Caylis's curse or disgusted by her visions, or even looked upon her with pity. She had simply accepted her as she was. The faerie was the first person to even ask Caylis what she saw in her nightmares.

      So Caylis summoned back her nightmares of tragedies past and yet to come. The visions that came to her out of her control now flooded in on her command, on purpose. She was so familiar with them that she knew exactly where to find them again.

      Before the faerie's eyes, Caylis laid scenes of warring armies in the ocean, and in lands where she had never set fin, of entire towns being cursed, in the desert, in the woods, in the mountains. She took them through the deathly silence of battlegrounds. She brought back images of Neopians she had never known falling into frozen slumber, not knowing if it would ever be safe for them to emerge from the ice again, the light in their eyes fading before her in real time; of Neopians fleeing from eruptions, avalanches, sandstorms, monsters, from the world that raged mercilessly around them. She brought back the Whirlpool.

      Every night, Caylis wandered among the victims of these tragedies, unable to look away from their haggard, gaunt faces, powerless to help. She wept freely in her dreamscape - what else was there to do? No one could hear her, anyway. She drifted back to the ruins of her family home and collapsed as it all came crashing down.

      The faerie strode through the visions fearlessly, unfazed, undaunted. Curious, even. She took it all in, and moved on. Caylis thought she looked like a survivor.

      In her wake, the Aisha felt herself stand straighter, swimming ahead with her head held higher.

      She woke up late in the morning, her stomach was rumbling.

      The statue became Caylis's sleeping spot. She returned every night. She rushed through her days, thinking of the faerie who accepted her company, wished for it, greeted her as soon as she had fallen asleep. It was like having someone to welcome her home.

      The faerie's interest in her visions only increased. She asked Caylis to show her more specific times and places. The Aisha did so. She had already seen it unfold. It was all the same to her. While the faerie watched the nightmares, Caylis got to watch the faerie. They returned often to Faerieland and Meridell, but most frequently to the place called Altador, where the faerie expounded on the details of its downfall.

      "You hold centuries of history for me to catch up on," the faerie told her proudly.

      "Caylis?" called a familiar voice.

      Caylis groaned. The voice called a second time, sounding nearer. Someone else had entered these ruins. A huge shadow swam overhead.

      Without thinking, Caylis grabbed her blanket and threw it over the statue

To be continued…