The Cappy Chronicle

For what seemed an eternity they all stood frozen to the spot, staring at the dead snake. Then, Corina screamed as she scooped her daughter into her arms and buried her face in a whimpering Teeka’s neck, sobbing quietly.

Asha couldn’t explain to herself what was happening. As she went to lean against the counter for support as the adrenalin started to wane from her system, she felt another surge hit her bloodstream. She felt a warm glow at her navel as again came the voice in her head, ‘behind you, Asha, behind you’.

Asha whirled around, dropping into a crouch as she did. Leaping across the huge expanse of floor toward them, mouth pulled back in a snarl, was a werecat. Asha knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that the cat was making for Teeka, tensing itself even as it ran to spring up and snatch the child from her mother’s arms.

The cat streaked past Asha’s outstretched reach toward the child. A scream of fury that she wasn’t aware she was making rushed from Asha’s mouth. Again she turned, her blood roiling with a protective impulse and her head swimming with noise. From nowhere, as the werecat left the ground to attack Teeka, unknown words flowed into Asha’s mind and out through her mouth.

“Chouritay vento remansay dicto amonti. Libricht rensolo arvay nonsito.” As she said each word it seemed to form visually in the air in front of her and fly toward the vicious cat. Each word was a different shape but each flew true and straight at the wild beast. Faster than she could even think , the shapes overtook the leaping cat and penetrated its body. The werecat gave a scream of pure frustration as it saw its prey disappear before its eyes. Only to Asha, it was the cat that disappeared, not Teeka. One minute the werecat was there leaping at Teeka, the next it had vanished into thin air.

The look of horror on Corina’s face caused Asha to rush to her side. Teeka, head buried in her mother’s neck, hadn’t even realised the danger she’d been in. But she knew her mother was terrified and that scared her.

Still on edge, Asha quickly scanned the room in all directions looking for further threats. It had all happened so quickly she hadn’t time to try to process what was happening. But the voices in her head seemed to have receded. Looking around she had the sensation that they were safe for the moment. The unexpected attacks had finished as quickly as they started.

Corina continued staring at Asha in a horrified fascination. “How did you do that?” she whispered. “What was that you said? What were those sounds?”

Leading Corina to the next room to sit down, Asha poured out two glasses of brandy to help calm their nerves. “Here drink this,” she urged Corina. Finding herself shaking now, Asha followed her own advice and downed a large slug of the liquor. Slumping in a chair she put her head in her hands. Then, to Corina’s horror, Asha leapt to her feet again, clutching her navel and whirling around in panic as she called out, “who are you, where are you? Oh, I’m going mad!”

Asha’s face was as pale as new snow. She shook her head from side to side as if to clear it. “Corina,” she beseeched, “I think I’m going mad. I’m hearing things in my mind - a voice, a man’s voice. It tells me things, it warns me, it tells me what to do. This can’t be real can it?”

Corina lay the now sleeping Teeka on the couch and came over to hug Asha. “I don’t know what is going on in your head, girl,” she said, “but you just saved my Teeka’s life - twice. If that voice helped you to do it then I say it IS real and not only real but good too.”

“Corina, this ornament I have attached to my navel - feel it.” Corina tentatively reached out to the silver orb. She gasped as it came in contact with her flesh. “Why its hot,” Corina exclaimed. “How….?”

Asha looked at her cook with weariness. “I don’t know Corina, I don’t know. I can’t remove it and since I had the piercing I keep having these strange dreams and voices in my head. And now these attacks. I don’t understand it at all. But I think they are all linked. But you saw the snake and that wild animal too didn’t you? They weren’t just my imagination?” Asha was beseeching Corina by now.

“They were as real as you or me, Asha. And they were after Teeka. Oh, my baby.” In tears again, Corina gently picked up her sleeping daughter and held her close. “Why would they attack my baby?”

Asha gently stroked the sleeping child’s cheek. “I don’t know, Corina. But she is my weak spot just as she is yours. I couldn’t bear anything to happen to her.” The orb at her navel had cooled again to normal temperature. Asha felt unutterably weary as all the hormones and emotion drained from her body. But she dreaded sleep - worried about what might come to torment her in her dreams.

Orien, the man whose face Asha had unwittingly embroidered into her artwork, stood on a hilltop surveying his surroundings. His dark hair was unkept and fell to his shoulders; the green eyes that had twinkled at Asha were now serious and alert.

Such a short time ago he had faced the enemy and slain three of their members. He had done it to protect Asha, and to protect her gift. The gift she was not even aware she had. Orien knew that Asha’s survival was necessary if the ”United Light“ were ever to sway victory in their favour. Ironic that it should be a woman who held the key to this. In his world women were not respected, unlike the world Asha inhabited. In Asha’s world women were seen as complete equals with men, but here in the in-between realms of the Mida world they still held the place of medieval times.

Orien scanned the horizon in all directions, searching with both his inner and outer senses for danger. At the same time his eyes searched, so did his mind send probes out to locate consciousness in the region. Mostly he picked up the frequencies of animals and those plants that were sentient. In the far distance he sensed humans but they posed no threat to him.

Satisfied Orien returned to his camp. With a flick of his mind he started a fire to keep him warm. He knew he didn’t need to use this old fashioned method for heat but he enjoyed the company of the flames and often used them as a springboard to other mental states.

Staring into the flickering fire he turned his thoughts to Asha. Her hair was the same colour as the flames and she had a similar fiery intensity in her blue eyes. Orien pondered on the only woman who had ever been gifted with the powers that lay inherent within all of the United. Why had she been chosen and what part was she to play?

Mesmerised by the flames he chuckled as he looked out at her through her tapestry, seeing the fear and confusion on her lovely face. He stretched out his mind to reach hers, but she had slammed shut the doors of inner perception and he could not, as yet, reach her. Not while she was awake and aware.

He was aware of the spacecar before he heard its electronic buzz. The minds within it had sent their feeble, unprotected thoughts scrambling out in all directions for anyone with the ability to pick them up. Orien merely had to think of the fire as extinguished and it was. Whilst not in danger, he still didn’t want his presence widely known.

Orien had no need for sophisticated nano-electronic devices and clothing to help him. Everything he needed he could accomplish with the power of his mind alone. Scanning the occupants of the spacecar he realised they were merely joyriders out for an evening flight.

In the darkness he turned his thoughts back to Asha. This took slightly more concentration than the joyriders as Asha lived in a different spacetime realm - an alternate reality to the one Orien normally inhabited. He could, of course, travel back and forth mentally across the multitude of dimensions with ease, but never physically without some form of pain or loss. So it had been when he’d transmuted himself into Asha’s bedroom, just in time to save her gift and her sanity. The pain had been intense and he had almost left it too late, arriving just as the Dark-master had located the amplification device buried in her soft skin. The United Light had taken a risk, implanting the device in Asha. Although it was designed to amplify her gift and make her slowly aware of her powers, it also alerted the dark lodge to her abilities and whereabouts. He, Orien, had been assigned to protect her and he had almost failed at the first sign of trouble.

At this recollection, he became aware of an incoming thoughtform. Clearing his mind of Asha and the circumstances of the attack on her, he tuned his frequency to match the incoming message. It was from one of the light-masters.

“Orien, you did well to slay the enemies but what of the woman now? Is she safe?”

Orien gathered the mental matter of his answer, focussed his intent and projected his reply to the specific frequency of the master addressing him. This was a private conversation – not one to be overheard by others.

“I was nearly too late. You should not have left it to the last minute to assign me as her protector. She’d had the device for five days before you arranged any protection. She could have been killed at any time during the delay. Why leave it so long?” Orien’s thoughts did not carry an emotional tone – they were created purely from mental matter, standing free of hidden currents. He stated the facts as he saw them.

“We had our reasons, Orien. The woman was safe enough until that evening when we called you. But she now requires your constant attention until she learns to harness her powers and focus her gift. For now she will wallow in confusion and fear. You must ensure she does not succumb to it.”

“What can I do? I cannot spare all my time to watch over her. It is not my job to nursemaid her.” Orien was not angry or annoyed, he merely projected the truth as he saw it to the light-master. “I do not even inhabit the same reality as Asha.”

“Ah, you call her by her name. You recognise her as a person not just a woman I see. This is good. The United have been most surprised that the gift is so strong in a female, some have even fought against accepting her role, but I see you do not. You are indeed the best possible one to teach her.”

“Teach her?” This time Orien did project some emotion along with the thought. Surprise and disbelief mingled with the tenuous thread of mindstuff he sent probing out to the other waiting mind.

“Yes, Orien. You must teach her. You must protect her. But you must be wary and cautious. Don’t let her know too much at once or it could drive her mad. She already balances on a delicate edge between sanity and madness, such as it exists in her dimension. We give you a mission, a task of vital importance for the future of all the realities and dimensions of consciousness. Do not fail us, Orien, or you fail us all.”

Asha jerked awake in a tangle of sweaty limbs and bedclothes. Startled she looked around the room, unsure for a moment where she was. Her dreams had been dark and twisted but she could remember no details. Now she was filled with a miserable sense of unease. There was something she needed to remember, to grasp hold of, something of vital importance but her brain wouldn’t focus or provide the necessary answers.

Struggling to disentangle herself from her bedding, Asha noticed a small stain on the pillow. It looked like blood. An involuntary shudder wracked her slim frame. Something teased at the edge of her memory but no matter how she tried it eluded her

She’d had this growing sense of unease for almost a week – ever since she’d acted completely out of character and had her navel pierced. An old-fashioned and outmoded custom left over from the 21st Century, some considered it barbaric and crude whilst others thought it quaint.

Strange, how that had come about. Asha had been dress-shopping…

She’d pulled the silky fabric over her head and let it fall. Her hands had smoothed the dress over her curves. Looking in the mirror Asha had twisted her upper body to and fro, swishing the gleaming material against her skin. She’d enjoyed the sensory experience, the feel of the garment against her skin and the way it moved when she turned.

“Mmm, I like this one”, Asha had commented to the wall, “it’s cool and silky against my skin and hangs beautifully”.The wall had grumpily responded, “Yes it suits you - as the holographic image already indicated - shall I place an order then?” Asha had smiled. She always shopped the old fashioned way rather than requesting a holographic image of herself draped in the beautiful fabrics. She stubbornly continued to annoy her digital dressmaker by insisting on trying on the real clothes before she’d buy.

Next she’d tried on a two-piece outfit. Gauzy and floaty, it showed off her taut midriff and exposed navel. Just as she was about to consult the projected image of her dressmaker, the image had disappeared and the lights had gone out.

In the pitch dark shop Asha had been at a disadvantage. The clothes she was trying on couldn’t be programmed to her frequency until she’d bought them. She’d moved away from her own clothes while parading up and down and now felt disoriented in the dark. Groping in what she’d hoped was the right direction, Asha had stumbled toward the back of the room.

Finally her outstretched fingers had grazed against her jacket. Made of purely synthetic fibres imitating the look and feel of linen, it was woven through with wireless nano-electronics that connected Asha to the world. The electronic cells were fuelled by thermal energy - sunlight, body heat - and so wouldn’t be affected by the electrical outage

She had spoken crisply, “activate emergency lighting”. The jacket in her hands had felt oddly stiff as nothing happened.

Electricity outages were rare. So rare, in fact, that Asha had been concerned. None of the emergency lighting had activated either suggesting the backup was also in trouble.

Just as she had been about to try to leave the shop, the power had come back on reactivating all the electronic devices in the room with a barely perceptible hum. Breathing a sigh of relief, she turned back to the wall and, in turning, had caught a glimpse of something shining that had disappeared as she focussed her gaze on it.

Always rather temperamental , her digital dressmaker had been cross at the delay. Looking down at Asha, the program had snapped, “what you need with that outfit is a navel piercing”. Suddenly the projected image had flickered, seemed to jump backwards and repeated “navel piercing, navel piercing, navel piercing”. A glitch in the program had caused it to loop around repeatedly on the phrase. Surprised, Asha had stared at the flickering dressmaker unable to make sense of what was happening. As the image had continued to flicker and repeat itself, Asha had hurriedly changed and left the shop, eager to get away from the strange occurrences.

Walking home, she had drifted past a shop she’d never noticed before. It had looked archaic and antiquated and the grimy sign swinging from the rusty hinges announced ‘Ye Olde Body Piercing and Tattoo Shoppe’. Something glowing in the window had caught Asha’s attention and tugged at her memory. Her mind had flashed back to the moment in the dress shop when she’d glimpsed something shiny. In the window in front of her had lain a tiny silver orb, the size of a grape, nestled in a bed of rose red tissue paper. It had seemed to radiate a cold, crystaline flame and Asha had felt herself drawn to it. Staring into its depths she’d been mesmerised, unable to turn away from the flickering glow. An old, wizened woman appeared inside the window and beckoned Asha to enter. Almost without knowing what she had been doing, Asha had entered the shop, where the hag greeted her; “ah my dear, you’ve come for your gift I see…”

Thirty minutes later, Asha had left the shop with the tiny silver orb attached to her flesh at the navel. As the old woman had pierced her flesh and inserted the orb, instead of pain, Asha had felt a warmth suffuse her midriff – a warmth that had swept through her whole body. The orb had nestled perfectly in her navel as though it belonged there. Asha could have sworn she heard it sigh with satisfaction. The whole process had had a dream like quality.

Asha had been haunted by nightmares every night since. Vague recollections of whispered voices in her head and feelings of foreboding had inhabited her night time realms, spilling over into her waking hours. During the day she found she suffered lapses of concentration, and would come to her senses to find herself gazing at the tiny silver orb joined to her flesh – the orb that she could not remove no matter what she tried. She’d attempted to find the ‘Shoppe’ to ask the old woman to remove it, but somehow she couldn’t locate it. It was as if the shop had disappeared off the face of the earth…

Now, five days later, Asha touched the silver orb that still clung to her midriff. It was warm to the touch giving off its peculiar clear, cold glow and yet it made her uneasy. It seemed as though the silver orb was now a part of her, melded to her skin forever. And with it came the nightmares…and the voices in her head.