A Window To A Soul

Chapter 45: Della

I was in a cold room. It was so cold. It was a memory. I could tell that much. But I was myself. I looked around the room and stood up. It was a room of cement. There was a door with a barred window. It was one of the prisons on the edge of the city. The worst ones.

There was a girl crying in the corner. She had white hair and had her head in her knees. Everything that I could see about her right now looked like Chloe. Exactly like Chloe. Or did she look like Epimora? I didn't know. I couldn't tell.

I walked up to the girl. I kneeled in front of her. "Hello?"

The girl looked up at me in surprise. There were tears staining her cheeks. Her eyes were purple. It wasn't Chloe. It looked like she was created by Oden.

The girl went back to crying. "Go away!" She spoke between sobs. I looked at the clothes she was wearing. It was the clothes worn by prisoners. It looked like dirty rags, torn up and shredded to fit their filthy look.

She looked so thin and malnourished. There was dirt under her nails and covering her skin. She had a few scrapes and bruises as well. Her hair looked matted. She had been here for a long time. There was a tray at the door. It might have been for food, but I didn't know. If it was, then she must've licked it clean.

The girl yelled again, her voice breaking this time. "GO AWAY! LEAVE ME!"

I back up, feeling a large amount of sympathy for the woman. But I stopped moving back and moved my hands to my chest, still feeling pain for her. "Who did this to you?"

She looked up at me, disgusted. It was as if she couldn't believe I had even asked that. "Who do you think?" She got up, stumbling as she did so. She wobbled and held herself up on the wall. She was so thin. "Who else would put me in here? Who would have beaten me, and raped me, and threaten to kill me if I didn't do what he said?"

My eyes widened as she screamed an answer. "IT WAS ELLIOTT! Except it wasn't." She looked down, fists shaking as tears fell on the cement floor. "It was Oden. Oden did this to me."

My eyes widened and my muscles tensed. But I wasn't in the room anymore. I was in a big room. It took me a second to realize where I was. It was Maya's home. I could feel someone's arm around me. I looked up and saw Cal's sleeping face.

I turned more and cuddled into his side. I wasn't that tired and I could see the light peek through the window, but I didn't feel like getting up. And I didn't need any answers for my dream. I knew who it was.

When I was younger, about 15, I had read a lot of news articles about the Great Ones in hopes that I would find something that could help me be a Great One as well. Elliott was interested in a specific purple-eyed girl and ordered her to go to his mansion many times. But after about a year of that, he ended up sentencing her to 5 years in prison and then executed her after. No one knew what actually happened. Some people thought that she might have attacked him, or maybe displeased him.

I guess she was just another 'Chloe' to him. She suffered a similar fate to Chloe, and I don't want Oden to ever do that again. He's a horrible being.

I felt Cal move and heard him groan. I looked up at him. His eyes were now open. He was looking down at me. I smiled at him, trying to hide the sadness from my face. But he wasn't fooled. "What's wrong?"

I looked down and put my head back on his chest. "Let's not talk about it. I want today to start off good."

Cal nodded. "Okay."

We both got up and noticed that Maya wasn't there. Cal and I went outside and saw Maya picking some corn from the cornfields. She had a straw hat on and Cal smiled while watching her. "I don't know why I always wanted to be like that. I don't blame myself, though. It seems peaceful."

Maya walked back to us with the corn in a wicker basket that she was holding against her hip. "Mornin' you two! You were out for a long time!"

Cal nodded and rubbed the back of his head. "Yeah, I've been tired lately."

I nodded. "Same. But I usually sleep in anyway. Cal is usually up early. The trainee schedule."

She nodded. "Ah! I see." She walked past us and to a well in front of the house. She pulled up some water in a bucket that was attached to a rope. She put the bucket on the side of the well wall and washed the corn.

Cal walked up to her and leaned against the well. "I always wanted to be a farmer."

She smiled at him. "It's not as bad as it seems. I find it peaceful. When you guys succeed in your mission, maybe you could help me." I liked how she said 'when' and not 'if'.

Cal shook his head. "No. I couldn't even get myself to try." He looked at me with sadness. "I was punished a long time ago. I can't exactly let go of it."

Maya put the bucket back in the well and nodded. "I see. I won't pester you about it, but I hope you can get better from it."

Cal nodded back to her. "Thank you, Maya."

Maya turned to the door and put a smile on her face, possibly to try to move away from the sorrowful subject. "Let's go get breakfast ready, shall we?"

Cal smiled and nodded. I tried to smile as well. "Yeah."