The Glowing Stone

Ayda was running.

She had no clear goal in mind, she only knew she had to get away. Just a look over her shoulder told her that she’d have to be faster. Running past houses and crossing empty streets, the footsteps behind her grew louder by every passing second.

Ayda wasn’t sure how much longer she could keep running. Her lungs had started burning, and she feared her legs would soon give out. She dared another look behind her. It was too dark to see who was running after her, or how many of them, but she knew they were catching up.

That was when she felt it. A quiet thumping, almost like a pulse. Ayda snapped her head to look forward again as the pulse grew louder. If she ran straight ahead, she would be going right toward it. She had no idea what the noise even was, and judging from the footsteps behind her, the source of this pulse shouldn’t be her priority at the moment.

Yet, as she went on, the pulse became louder until she could hear nothing else. Ayda turned left into a narrow street, and almost rushed into the wall of stone in front of her. No way to go. She couldn’t go back, the others would have almost caught up to her by now.

Her eyes scanned the alley as much as possible in the dark. There was no place to hide, everything she could see was stone – the walls, the ground, the small stone in front of her that seemed to radiate a dim light…

Ayda’s breath caught. The glowing stone hadn’t been there just a second ago. She heard a shout too close behind her and realized the pulse had quieted down to a soft thump, that sounded in time with the pulse of the stone’s light.

Not knowing what she was doing, Ayda jumped forward to grab the little stone off the floor, just as a group of people halted at the entrance of the alley. Ayda turned just in time to see some of them sprinting the few steps towards her. She saw their victorious smirks, their outstretched arms eager to get hold of her.

Then, she saw nothing.

The alley was gone, as were the people. All around her was nothing but black, except for the little glowing stone in her hand. There were no sounds, only an endlessness of black and silence.

The next second, Ayda was standing on a glade. The sun was bright, and its heat burned down on the shadowless grass.

Just ahead of her, the woods started. Ayda walked towards the trees, glad for their shadows and shield of the brightness. She wasn’t used to so much light.

The sun had never burned so bright where Ayda lived, and its heat had lessened years ago. Looking up through the treetops, Ayda wondered why she had never heard of a place like this, where the sun was how it once used to be. She blinked against the freckles of light shining through the leaves, and wondered how she had gotten here.

The stone was cold in her hand, but as she looked down at it, she realized its glow had ceased. Ayda shook her hand a little, hoping to somehow turn the little light back on, but nothing happened.

“Hey!”

Ayda jumped at the sudden noise, just a few meters away from where she stood. Her head jerked up as her body tensed in fear of seeing the people chasing her earlier again. If she had gotten here, they might have as well.

A girl was running towards her. She looked around Ayda’s age, and her expression looked similar to how Ayda imagined her own right now. Eyes wide in shock, but with an interested glint. That was about where their similarities ended though. The girl’s skin was sun-kissed and dark like she spent most of her time in the warmth of the sun and was almost a direct contrast to Ayda’s paleness from spending years without proper light.

When the girl stood right in front of Ayda, she could see many little dark spots on her face. And when she started talking, Arya jumped again at the sound of her voice.

“How did you just turn up out of nowhere?” the girl asked, mustering Ayda with growing interest. Her voice was melodic, like nothing Ayda had heard before and she was almost scared to respond, too aware of her own raspy voice. Besides, she wasn’t sure what she could possibly say, that wouldn’t make her sound crazy. The girl was still looking at her, so Ayda just said the first thing coming to her mind.

“Why is the sun so bright here?”

The other girl raised her eyebrows, then looked up through the trees, catching a few glints of sunlight. “That’s just…” she started before her eyes locked on Ayda’s again. “It’s just normal sunlight?”

Ayda shook her head. There was no sunlight like this anymore. “In my city, there is only dim light. Any place I’ve seen is pretty dark.” She squinted up again. “So, I don’t get why I’ve never heard of a place like this one where the sun is still normal.”

There was silence. When Ayda lowered her gaze again, the girl frowned at her. After just a few seconds, her face softened.

“Alright,” she said carefully. “What’s your name?”

“Ayda,” Ayda answered, surprised at the sudden change in the girl’s voice. “What’s yours?”

The girl smiled at her. “Kirana.” She gestured around her. “We’re in Elion right now. Where are you from?”

Now it was Ayda’s turn to frown. She had never heard of a city called Elion. This really was a weird place. “I’m from Otino,” she started, sure the girl would know the city. It was one of the biggest still standing. “Can you tell me how far away we are from there?”

“Otino,” Kirana murmured. She thought for a while, then shook her head. “Sorry, I’ve never heard of it. Is it a kingdom east or west from the Avion?”

“The what?”, Ayda asked. Aside from her surprise that Kirana didn’t know her city, she had no idea what a kingdom was and neither did she know anything called Avion.

Judging from Kirana’s face, she was equally confused. “Avion. The river,” she said. “It’s literally the middle of our world. How do you not know it?”

“The middle of the world? Isn’t that what people call one of the big cities? Otino is also a center.”

“I literally have no idea what you’re saying.”

Nothing made sense anymore. Ayda felt like running again, only this time she didn’t have the familiarity of her city around her. She had known most of the streets at home, but here she knew nothing. And it scared her. Her hand clutched tighter around the stone.

The stone. Ayda’s eyes widened. She held her hand out in front of her and opened her fist. The stone still wasn’t glowing and she couldn’t hear the pulse from earlier either, and something else was wrong with it. It looked out of place.

“What is that?” Kirana asked, her voice more tense than earlier. She must also be feeling the weirdness of the stone in this place.

A small memory of her childhood crawled its way into Ayda’s mind. “You know,” she said slowly, not sure if she believed what she was thinking. “There is a children’s story where I’m from. It’s mostly exists to keep kids from picking up stuff from the streets, but no one ever paid much attention to it.”

She looked up from the stone and met Kirana’s eyes. Ayda had expected more confusion, but there was a sense of understanding in the girl’s eyes.

“The glowing stone?” Kirana asked. So, she knew.

Ayda nodded. “I picked it up while running away from someone. It was glowing and I heard this weird pulse around it…” Her voice trailed off. In the story, a boy picked up a glowing stone and was sent to a world in a different universe.

“You think…” Kirana started, but the though seemed too ridiculous to actually say it out loud. Ayda couldn’t have travelled across universes with nothing but a glowing stone. She shook her head.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Ayda said. “But in the story, the boy holds the stone while thinking of his home, and then travels back.”

“So, you’ll try that?”, Kirana asked. Ayda hated how unsure she sounded, even though she wasn’t sure herself.

Instead of answering, Ayda held the stone close to her. She closed her eyes and focused on her heartbeat. Slow thumps, similar to the one the stone had had. Nothing changed. Ayda opened her eyes, surprised at how disappointed she was, but where she should have seen the trees and the brightness of the sun again, she only saw black. The stone in her hand gave of a pulse again and in the darkness, Ayda could see its light again. Fainter than before, but there nonetheless.

Had she really travelled to a different universe? It was hard to believe, but everything had been so new, the sun too bright. Maybe it wasn’t just a story after all.

Ayda smiled, happy she could be home again even if she had to run again. She never really liked the darkness of her world, but she had gotten used to it. Otino was the city she had called home her entire life, and Ayda wasn’t ready to give it up.

A second later, she saw Kirana again. The brightness of the unfamiliar sun, the warmth that embraced her.

Ayda clutched her hand, hoping the stone would work again with a little more pressure, but there was nothing. She lifted her hand that held the stone just moments ago. It was empty. The stone was gone.

Her way home was gone.

She was stuck in a world she knew nothing about.

Ayda didn’t realize she was shaking until Kirana embraced her. She started letting her tears flow freely,

She could never go back home.