The Divide: Luminescence

Chapter 2

I woke up in Jaspers car, and stretched my aching body.

“How long have I been asleep?”  

He kept his eyes on the road while he answered me “Nearly two hours. You were emotionally exhausted; I wanted to let you rest.”

He was right, I did need sleep. But I also needed answers. And while I got one of those, it wasn’t the one I had wanted.

“Jasper,” I started, “you need to tell me everything. I’m completely in the dark here, going into this with only my trust in you. I could easily run and never see you again, but I’m choosing to come with you. So will you please tell me where I’m going and what all of this means?”

 “Bronwyn…” He paused, as if he were deciding what he could and couldn’t say. He looked over at me, sighed, and continued on. “I’m taking you to a place called The Divide. It’s a safe haven for our kind - for people like you and me. We have old magic that runs through our blood, and it is easily detectible to the darkness outside of the divide. Our power is a sort of…magnet for them. They feed off our magic to make themselves stronger. But there is a sort of shield around The Divide that safely hides us from them. It masks all of our power.

The Divide is where most of us live, and it’s where the young are tested and trained.”

“Jasper, none of this makes any sense to me. I know you’re trying to help me figure everything out, but you’re only leaving me with more questions.”

“Lady Ira will fill in anything I haven’t,” he looked at me, guessing what was about to come out of my mouth next. “And don’t worry; we’re here, so you won’t have to wait any longer.”

I sighed and looked out the window, not knowing what to expect.

“Jasper, I don’t see anything out of the ordinary. What are you...”  My speech faltered as the landscape before me started to change. It wasn’t like what you read in books though, it wasn’t like all of a sudden something appeared before me that I had missed before; no it wasn’t like that at all. It was a slow transformation, like we were in an invisible tunnel, and the closer we got to the end, the clearer the image became. It started slowly at first, it looked like the air was full of snowflakes, but they weren’t white. They were gold, and they didn’t fall, they seemed to be floating, and as we got closer, they became more concentrated, and you could see other colours in the gold. There was a dark purple and light pink sheen to them. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

“Jasper, what is that? It’s stunning. I feel like I’m in the middle of a million stars.”

“It’s our magic, concentrated. Every person sees it differently though. When I look at it, I see light blue mist with silver wisps in it. It’s a direct representation of the magic that is my blood.”

I looked at him, wishing I could see what he saw.

“It’s so different for me. It’s all gold, like Tinkerbell threw pixie dust over everything.”  How could this be real? How could I really be seeing this, this….magic?

“Stop questioning everything. I know that look. Just enjoy it, okay?” Oh, and welcome to The Divide love.”

I glared at his use of the word love, but not for long. I decided to refocus myself on something more important than Jasper. Where, exactly, I was. The best way to describe it would be to say that it was a massive university campus, except perhaps on steroids. We drove down a path to what I assumed was the main building, given how enormous it was. He pulled the car to the side of the road and looked at me and grinned.

“Shall we?” I looked at him, nodded, and got out of the car. I shut my door and stepped onto the gravel path that lead up to the building. It was made of jet black stone, and I was curious where they found rock like that. It gave the main building an extremely daunting look. It looked sleek and refined.