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Ophelia

We were being attacked by a swarm of bugs. This was glorious, it was like something out of a dream or a storybook. I grinned.

Okay, so we were supposed to get up to that door. I paused to take off my shoes. I trusted my feet more than my shoes. I shoved them in my purse and swung it around to my back so they wouldn’t fall out.

Alaric and Jade helped boost me up, then it was up to me.

I gripped the rough places I found, then paused to assess. I pressed my feet to the rocks, holding on more easily than I thought I would.

I had only done rock-climbing once or twice, and always on artificial walls. This was harder, and I didn’t have the harness.

I smiled to myself, then started humming the song that had been stuck in my mind for the past few days. This would be fine.

”Well, keep going, silly!” said Jade, impatiently. She had mistaken my pause for hesitancy.

I kicked off against the grip, giving myself the push I needed to grab on to the next hand hold.

My muscles were straining. Under any other circumstances I would have stretched first before attempting something like this. The idea of getting injured in the middle of repetitions was enough to give me nightmares and far more terrifying than the drop beneath.

By the time I reached the top I was out of breath, but too proud of myself to care. That had been fun.

”Go next and make sure she doesn’t do anything stupid,” Jade told Alaric.

My smile faded. Had she thought I couldn’t hear or had she meant for me to hear it?

All the others hurried up after me in short order, Lorcan and Alaric first.

I peered over the edge. I had never been up sufficiently high enough to conclude whether I had a fear of heights, but now I had concluded that I did not.

I watched with horror as the last few people hurried toward the wall. The insects looked like a cloud, like a raven flying and shedding feathers in its wake.

Cal’s hair stood out against the darkness surrounding it. A man hurried up and tried to assist her, but she kicked him in the shins so hard he stopped trying. She sprinted past him and started scaling the wall.

If it had been anyone else, I would have encouraged her, but Cal seemed to have a grudge against me. Besides, Lorcan and Jade were helping up the others on the ledge, and I would just be a bother. I sighed and drew further back into the cave.

Something stung my leg and I yelped before I could stop myself. I smacked it off and a large insect plummeted to the ground. The stinging pain seeped through me, harsher than I had thought. I winced but didn’t make another noise. I didn’t want to distract the others.

The door slammed shut, with everyone on the right side of it. I was pretty sure.

The girl by the entrance who looked like Athena had her face buried in her knees. She looked miserable. Rosemary appeared to have been bitten by insects, judging by how her face was twisted into barely convincing blankness.

I wished I could help.

They didn’t want or need my help. I’d just get in the way.

They’d think I was mean if I didn’t offer. They’d think I was dumb if I did, while it was obvious that there was no way I could.

I was completely useless. I sat against the wall and pulled on my shoes again. Sometimes the only thing you could do was stay out of the way.

The painful numb feeling started spreading over me. The helplessness, the loneliness. Nobody really wanted me here. Rather the opposite. Almost everyone I’d interacted with had very much seemed to wish I would disappear.

I checked my nails, something that had become an automatic instinct when I couldn’t bear thinking about anything else.

Thankfully, none of them had broken on the climb up.

“Sooo, Lord Castle.”

That wasn’t a voice I recognized. I looked up, trying to place it. It was a boy with ruffled blonde hair, a few years younger than I was.

He raised his hand and said,

“Hey who all returns to the same dreams they dream to figure out what happens in their dreams?! Oh, what if everyone you meet in a dream is somebody who’s dreaming too and dreams are another dimension!?”

He bobbed to his feet and I grinned and answered.

“Ooh, I do! I don’t even understand it the second time but sometimes I know what’s coming!” I paused for introspection. “But even then I can’t change what happens in the end. What if we’re all in a dream right now and the end has already been written?”

I paused to consider that, then nodded, certainly.

The loneliness was gone, driven out by something new that had grabbed my interest. That was good enough for now. It would keep it away a while.

“I’m Ophelia, what’s your name?” I said, brightly.