Lania - Path to Light (Part 1)

         The blonde thirteen-year-old girl leaned against the thick trunk of the tree. Her forehead was beaded with sweat and her hands gripped the fishing rod in her hands tightly. She swallowed hard and gripped the rod until her knuckles turned white. She was losing strength fast. The fish under the swirling currents of blue water flopped and turned about, struggling to bring the bait under.

      With a ferocious pull, the girl yanked the fish out of the water. Droplets of cool pond water dripped onto her face from the fish’s flapping tail. The fish hit the grassy earth with a thump and went still, dead. The line went slack as it slid out of the girl’s fingers. Her knees gave way and she sat down with a thump. The fish lay beside her, its slimy eye staring, unfocused, at her.

      The girl shuddered, blinking the water out of her eyes. She stood up on her wobbly legs and grabbed hold of the pole, bringing the fish - with its mouth still cupped over the hook - with her. She sighed. She bet that no other person had enough trouble with fishing like she did.

        Lania, a girl who had lived all her life hidden in the forests of Ellinia dragged the sloppy wet fish through the forests, dry leaves and stray twigs sticking onto the fish’s slimy skin. A cool wind blew through the land, shaking leaves loose. A rustling sound could be heard as the grass clashed together, the wind whistling through the gaps. Lania blew a stray strand of silvery blond hair out of her face and heaved the rod onto her shoulder. The cold metal burnt through her clothes, biting at her skin. She shuddered and sighed, miserable.

       She was naturally a weak girl, even when she spent her life in the wild. She had never been good at stuff like fishing and such, but what could she do? She had to do what she had to survive. Penny was a help sometimes, catching the occasional rat that roamed her house in the woods, but other than that, her food supplies had all been cut to fish, vegetables, and FISH.

      “It wasn’t always like this,” Lania muttered, her face sagging into a sad expression. “I used to have someone with me….who caught me fish and stuff….” Lania’s blue eyes rested on the fish, its slimy eyes gazing at her accusingly. She tightened her grip on the rod and strode at a steady pace into the forest. A single fat teardrop fell from her cheek without her even realizing it and she continued on into the darkness.

                            ******

       “Penny, I’m home!!” Lania cried cheerfully through the hollow walls of her house. A white cat sat curled up in the corner, its small wings folded behind its back. It opened its golden eyes at the sound of its mistress’s voice ad sat up, stretching. A small pink bow rested on top of its snow white head.

        “Mew….” Penny purred softly, rubbing herself at her mistress’s legs. Lania laughed and patted her furry head gently. Penny’s tail flicked back and forth in happiness and it nuzzled its head at Lania’s palm. Its golden eyes rested on the line of the fishing pole and she batted it with her paw. Lania coughed and held it out of reach as her cat pounced up the grab the dangling line and failed miserably.

        “Oh, Penny,” Lania sighed, yanking the fish off the pole. Lania winced at the touch of its soft, slimy skin. Penny gazed at the fish with her curious yellow eyes as Lania made her way to the kitchen. She already could taste the fish on the tip of her tongue. She sighed. Fish everyday……she had to find something better to feast on. However, the fish was forgotten entirely when she caught sight of her kitchen; everything was in its proper place, except for the jam jar that sat atop of the wooden tabletop, its cover sitting beside it. Bread was strewn over the table, and a bread knife was on top of a chair, the tip of it bloodied; someone had been in here.

      “Penny…” Lania gasped, her eyes resting on the cat sitting, curious, beside her. “Who….who was in here?” Penny’s ears flicked and she gazed up at her mistress’s worried blue eyes, then mewed once and walked back out of the kitchen. Lania’s eyes followed her cat until she vanished from sight. It took her awhile to realize that through the shock, she had dropped the fish, the sticks and pebbles that were stuck to it now scattered around it.

      Lania scooped the fish off the floor and rested it on the tabletop, greasing the area around it. She screwed back the lid of the jam jar and tucked it back into the cabinet. Then she gathered up the bread and packed it back into the plastic bags. As she reached for the knife, her fingers accidentally touched the bloody tip and she yanked it away hastily. The knife dropped off the chair and hit the floor with a metallic clang which echoed through her vacant house.

       With rising nausea, Lania held her finger a good distance away and ran for the sink. The cold water rinsed trough the gaps between her fingers and the blood slid off her fingers easily, staining the water pink. She shut off the water and heaved a sigh. Who was in her house? And suddenly an even more troubling question arose; did he or she take something? Her supplies were already limited! It would be a disaster to be robbed.

       Suddenly, a rustling sound could be heard from behind her and she jerked back hastily, whirling behind her. Everything seemed fine, nothing out of the ordinary. Her eyes flickered back and forth. Did Penny stumble upon something? Or was the burglar still somewhere in the house? Lania took a few steps backwards, her eyes as big as saucers. “P-Penny?”

Rustle.

      “Who’s there!?” Lania shrieked, backing into the refrigerator. Suddenly, she was aware the rustling had been caused by wind blowing onto a pile of empty rubbish bags. She gaze shifted onto the source of the wind; the window by her kitchen had been shattered, pieces of glass littering the counter below. Some of the glasses were bloodied crimson, like the burglar had used a very inexpert way of punching the glass to get into the house.

        Lania gagged. She hated blood, especially since this blood seemed pretty fresh, like the burglar had barely made it out of her house before she swung her door open. Penny wound her way through her mistress’s legs to cheer her up, mewing occasionally. Lania shuffled across the room, her hands over her mouth, trying to keep her insides in as the smell of fresh blood wound up her nostrils. Penny bounded over to her, mewing, trying to see what had caused her mistress so much discomfort.

      Lania emerged from her kitchen and tripped over the handmade wool carpet. She hit the floor hard and her hands bruised from breaking her fall. Her chest flattened against the wooden planks of the floor and she gasped, heaving herself back onto her feet. Penny sat on her lap as Lania rested herself back onto the floor, her breathing ragged, and the smell of blood still fresh in her mind.

      “Mew! Mew!” Penny mewed in distress. Lania gazed at her cat and sighed, petting her cat on her snow white head. “I’m…I’m okay, Penny,” Lania said, lying through her teeth. She had never felt so uncomfortable in her whole life. But the cat seemed to believe it. She sat down and cocked her head to the side, studying her mistress’s troubled expression. 

     Lania lifted the cat off her lap and stood up on her wobbly legs. Penny pawed at her feet, mewing unstoppably. Lania smiled and petted the cat softly. Penny purred. “Penny, don’t worry, I’m fine,” Lania straightened up and took some steps behind her. “Pen, I have to go see if whoever it was in here took something, alright? Stay here, and don’t be a nuisance.”

“Mew….”

     “I’ll be fine.” Lania gave her cat a brief smile, then turned on her heel and walked back towards the kitchen, carrying a broom and a dustpan with her on the way. She swept up the pieces of glass and dumped them into the trash, clinking and cracking as they tumbled into the abyss.

    “Okay, then,” Lania said, licking her dry lips. She dumped the broom and dustpan at the corner and clapped her hands together, rubbing them together. “Let’s see what you took, Mr. Burglar.” She inspected all her valuables, and was relieved to see they were still there. After inspecting practically the whole house, she was relieved to see that nothing seemed gone. She sighed in relief, but then was bombarded by the thought that something was not where it should be.

And suddenly she knew where to look.

     She ran up the stairs to her room, where she kept everything important to her, including a pearl necklace given to her by her real father before he died. In fact, she knew very little about her real family, her mother and father and such. The last thing she wanted was one of the most treasured items of her mysterious past to be stolen.

    She crashed into her room and flew at her desk. She yanked her cabinet open and was surprised – and relieved – to see that the necklace was still there, glinting in the fading daylight the filtered through the open window by her desk. She closed the cabinet slowly, relieved, but for some reason the feeling of a missing item did not go away. She glanced around her desk, and suddenly, she realized that something was missing.

Something she wished she could trade back for with even the pearl necklace.

    “Oh, no….” she gasped as realization dawned to her. She pulled open cabinets, reached under her bed, under her desk, under everything, wondering if she had just misplaced it. But no. That was what the thief took, and it had to be one of the most treasured items of her life.

The picture of her and her foster father.

     Her foster father was a peculiar man by the name of Luminous, and even the name sounded weird. By the age of seven Lania had stumbled upon him in the woods. He was (for some reason even now she could not understand) unconscious and she had waked him up with a stick jabbed to his face. He had also been strange on the outside as he had one blue eye, and one red. Since he was pretty much homeless, Lania offered to let him stay in her house, and from then on, he had treated her the same way as a father would treat his beloved daughter, and she felt the same way about him.

Until that horrid day.

    It had been a bright day, the sun piercing through the thick green canopy of twigs and leaves. A day like this seemed to be a perfect day for a picnic, and that’s what she told Luminous. Luminous, of course, had agreed and Lania had set off to work on packing apples and such to bring on their little trip. As they went outside, Lania suddenly was bombarded by a horrid, cold feeling that snaked up her stomach like a thick black snake.

     Luminous stopped dead in his tracks and seemed to be focusing on something with such intensity Lania wondered what he saw in thin air. Suddenly, it seemed like he was struck by the most horrible headache to ever strike one of mankind. He stumbled backwards, and thick coils of darkness snaked their way from where he stood. Lania shrieked a little and backed away.

     Suddenly, Luminous shrieked: “Lania! Stay back…..!” But then, the coils of darkness shot out of the ground and reached for Lania. She shrieked and dropped the basket of food at her feet. She turned around and ran back to her house, the darkness swimming at her heels. One caught her in the head. She remembered very little after that.

      When she awoke, her whole body was bruised and battered badly. The thick trunks of the trees where Luminous stood where incinerated into bits of flaky ash and dust. Her house had collapsed into rubble. Penny bounded over to her, mewing continuously, but Lania just kept her gaze focused ahead, where her father used to be standing; Luminous was gone.

And he never came back after that.