But instead of the pitch black he expected to come…the world beyond his eyelids grew bright.
Slowly opening his eyes, uncurling around Skya, he gasped as he looked around the train compartment. Yellow…the world was yellow now. Many shades of lemon yellow, in fact. Even the shadows of the people on the other side glowed a deep dark shade of yellow. Skya let out a giggle, and started to excitedly wave her arms in his lap.
“It’s…so bright.” He turned to the Dweller.
“Mm,” Severo said with a gentle smile. “Not so scary, is it?”
“Just as you said, it’s brighter than it was during the daytime…but why? I’ve…been in a Shadow Realm at night, it was…pitch black…it’s…”
“Preston’s night is darker than his day?” Severo mused, sounding slightly shocked.
“It’s pitch black… You can’t… You can’t see anything.”
The Dweller rubbed the back of his neck, expression grim. “Like I said before, the Realm forms based on who we are. It isn’t a constant, because people change as they grow, and sometimes even after. There is a little more to it… The day is said to be who we present to the world, while the night in our Realm shows our truest intentions, emotions, personality, etc. I don’t believe all that completely, but if Preston’s is how you have described it…then inside and out, the man is more horrible than we even imagined.”
“I don’t have to imagine… I lived it.” Seri sighed, before looking around again. “It’s pretty.”
“Thank you.” Severo smiled, before stretching and reaching up to take down the messy bun that had been looking more mess than bun for a while now. His black hair fell around his face, past his shoulders. “Two more hours and we’ll get off this thing and find a car.”
“How far will we be driving?” he asked, doing his best to keep the exhaustion out of his voice. If Severo could manage to sound peppy after this long ass trip, he could attempt, at least a little…
“Three hours more. I’ll have to switch to the real world when I drive. It’s too dangerous otherwise, but you can remain here with Skya.”
“Here?” he asked with trepidation.
Seri supposed staying in here alone with Skya during the night didn’t sound as bad, compared with him having to do it during the day. Still…Seri hated that he couldn’t leave on his own. But it wasn’t as if he could go on the other side…
“I’ll be beside you the whole time, I promise. Just on the other side.”
“I won’t be able to hear you,” Seri pointed out. “At least, I don’t think I will, because all of you will be over there, even if this is your realm.”
“I’ll cut a hole into my Shadow Realm, so you can hear what I say, but maybe you could take a nap then?”
Seri nodded. “Maybe…I should probably try to get Skya to sleep some. I haven’t been able to get her onto any sort of sleep schedule with all the running I’ve been doing.”
“I imagine it would be difficult. Though, until we know where we plan to stay, there may be no point in trying until we at least know the time zone we will be in.”
He sighed. “No doubt.”
Seri stared blanklyout the car window, trying not to fall asleep. They had to be almost there. He did a double take on spotting theCrazy Six Diner.
Surely, they weren’t… He glanced around, eyes widening when he saw the town sign—Welcome to Bracelin. Seri couldn’t believe it… He was really back in that dinky little town he’d wandered into four-ish months ago. Coincidence or… What else could it be, besides a coincidence?
He frowned as they drove past the town, and into an area of open road, no buildings. Which made sense. He had already figured the town had been built after the great war…likely this area had been destroyed.
During the great Cryptid-Human War, many towns were completely wiped off the map. Afterwards,some rebuilt, but many more relocated. Once they started building homes on floating foundations, shrinking the space needed for housing…a lot of towns simply died out, and were later bulldozed to allow nature to reclaim the areas.
Most buildings in existence now were floating. Because it gave the owner the ability to lift the house up higher, if needed, and or move the house all together, to avoid mother nature destroying it.
They turned off onto a dirt road that had a whole lot of nothing on either side, besides cactuses and some scattering of shrubs.
Seri frowned when he thought he saw a spark of something in the distance. His eyes widened as they reached it, on seeing that it was some sort of fence. Though, rather than a fence, it was more an electric current running many feet into the air. But it was fence-like enough…because many volts of electricity stood between them and whatever was on the other side. No gate, just the electric current blocking the road, threatening to fry them if they drove on…
“Where are we?” he asked.
Severo glanced over. It was still odd and freaky to see him all shadowy. “A crazy paranoid friend of mine's compound.”
Seri frowned. “Crazy?”
