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Thursday 29 March 2012

Adam

The grains of sand crashed back into each other and somehow became me again. An improvement on being nothing, yes, but not an experience I could enjoy. My skin was trying to crawl off my body and my stomach up my throat. Both feelings went quickly, but I didn’t feel good. Some aspects of verisimilitude could easily be cut, to my way of thinking.
I was now standing in daylight on a grassy hill. Somewhere off in the distance was the glint of early morning sunlight on water. I tottered forward to where a Scot was saying to come and sit down. There were others, adults and kids, coming out of the thin air behind me. No one crashed into anyone else, but everyone had the same kind of bedsprings-recovering-from-an-orgy look to them.
I flopped down on the grass, propped myself up on an elbow and thought, 'Oh,________'.Ah, the ____ nannyware. I couldn't even think a good curse. The grass, anyway, felt good; it felt real. Really grassy grass stalks tickled and gently prickled at my hands and the back of my neck. There was a smell in the air of full summer. I was preparing to lie down on that real grass and feel even better, when something offered me a drink.
It was a dwarf. There’d have to be some here, though, wouldn’t there? Pun completely intentional, but it’d be a minimum. This one was about a metre tall with muscles like a small wrestler. Clean-shaven, and dressed more like a coffee-shop waiter in charcoal grey than an extra from Lord of the Rings, it… he, held the tray towards me and mumbled, “Dringim.”
I took a cup and sipped at it. The taste was a lot like rooibos, which I drink to escape endless cups of green tea, but the effect was incredible; I was instantly clear in the head. It was obvious everyone else around was feeling the same. There were a few ‘wows’- but not ‘like wow’s’, which the kids all say now. A small thing, but it registered as a neat touch. You hear it everywhere; the kids in Kyoto were ‘like-wowing’ before I left, but we never used the expression back then.
A last figure flowed out from the thin air of the Gate; outlined on this side by standing stones covered in runes. It became a tall, lean, dark-haired man, dressed all in black- jeans, shirt and some kind of trench coat. His collar was open and he looked as if he hadn’t shaved or slept, except perhaps in the clothes, for a few days. His eyes were bloodshot, with bags and black circles beneath them. Looked like he'd escaped from the lead role in a Hollywood blockbuster. He blinked, shook his head as if to clear it, and picked up a cup with a mutter of “Thanks, Gava.”
He took a long swig from the cup, and I swear the red in his eyes faded away while he was drinking. When he lowered the cup and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, the stubble was still on his face and the creases still in his clothes, but the signs of exhaustion had vanished. He gave a sigh and a healthy sounding belch and said, “Ah, better.” It was the voice from the other side of the gate.
He moved in front of the bodies sprawled on the grass and addressed us.
“Seekers. Welcome to the Land. I know the first Crossing is not a pleasant thing, but we have to press on. From here we must walk to the river. Then we’ll take boats to get us to the City of Black River Bridge. There you’ll undergo your Initiation - the Ceremony of Opening.” He paused and looked around at us.
“For some of you, that’ll mark the end of your stay here,” That was said seriously enough to make it sound like bad news. “While for others it’ll mean the beginning of your training.” That somehow didn’t sound as if anything more cheerful was in store. “To all, I wish you well, I wish you well. Now please,” he gestured, “To your feet. The walk to the river will take about two hours. You’ll be so kind as to follow the Mages.”
There was a thing about him; what he said, you did. This guy was a lot like Uncle Steve - a leader; you could read it in every line of him.  Not a violent man, at a guess, but one who was very confident in his own abilities and used to giving orders and having them followed.
I stood up and realized I reached only as tall as the middle of his chest. Before I had the time to think he was some kind of a giant, I noticed a boy standing slightly to one side of him. The boy couldn’t have been more than twelve, more likely eleven. He was the same size as me; possibly a little taller. I was eleven years old again.
Take my word for it, when I say it’s the sort of thing that can ruin your day, I’m not joking at all. I’d known it was going to happen, yes, but as a fact like something I’d read in the in-flight magazine. You know the thing, 90% of Dubai’s buildings have been green-roofed, oh isn’t that interesting? It’s very different to feel it in your suddenly-much-smaller bones. I worked hard and managed a 'Damn' - a  whispered one. It wasn't nearly enough.

Hah! Believe me sonny, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

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