Chapter 9: Chapter 9: Cynthia’s POV

 

I wake up to the sight of… the sky? 

… Wait, what? 

That doesn’t make any sense. Maybe I’m hallucinating because I’m still tired?

Okay, um, stay calm, organize. If I remember correctly, after we got back from the library, Silver’s- I mean, Adeline’s fancy maids greeted us at the door. I think we spent a little too much time at the library since they were all shouting and saying how they were “so worried” and that they were “afraid something tragic may have happened to her.”

Well, they’re not wrong. That tree branch incident was pretty intense. Oh and the tree branch incident number two was also pretty intense. 

On our way back Adelia tripped and almost fell on a tree branch that was sticking straight out of the ground somehow. If I hadn’t caught her by the back of her dress she could’ve gotten impaled! BY A TREE BRANCH! I get chills just by thinking about it. It’s almost like this place wants to get rid of her.

Maybe because she’s not the original person in the body? Still, I don’t understand how it relates to the literal WORLD trying to murder her.

Anyways, enough thinking about that. I’m sure that once we got back, they got her dressed in her nightgown. Silver was reading a book that she took from Adeline’s personal collection of fiction before bed. I fell asleep on the floor since everything's rock solid these days and not even clothes are comfortable. Well, I’m not saying it’s uncomfortable since, you know, spirits can’t feel, but compared to my bed? Rock. Solid.

Oh, right, back to the main point. The last thing I remember was thinking that her ceiling was fancy as hell.

Okay, so why can I see the hecking sky?!?! No matter how much I blink, it's just the blue background with white fluffy clouds floating around, and ooh, that one looks kinda like a pig with a crown.

Anyways, reviewing the events last night didn’t help with anything.

I decide that I should probably turn and look down, but I don’t really feel like moving so I just twist my head. Beneath me is the house's garden. It’s a pretty nice garden too. There are benches and lots of pretty flowers. Oh, and also a really short hedge that looks like it could be a garden maze for toddlers. This was probably one of Adeline’s favorite resting places.

Then it hits me.

Below me is the garden.

And I’m floating.

If you were sleeping peacefully one day, and then you suddenly find yourself floating in the air over a garden while knowing that humans usually don’t float, you would probably freak out too. 

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHOHMYGODWHATAHFJKDSJ!!!” 

I shout incomprehensible sentences as I try to flip around again. I would rather see the sky than the ground I was floating SIX FEET OVER.

I see Adelia rushing towards her window, but freezes when she sees me trembling in fear.

“Adeliiiaa!” I whine, squeezing my eyes shut.

Contrary to my expectations, I hear a giggle. I open my eyes again to see if my ears were working properly. They are. She’s laughing. A lot. I’m flailing around like a maniac trying to do something about my situation, and she’s laughing! 

“Oh, this is so funny, isn’t it? Stop making fun of me and help!”

“How am I supposed to help you? I can't fly!” She replies, still smiling at this apparently hilarious sight. I twist my face into a deadpan expression and sigh loudly, making sure she knows I’m annoyed at her.

Really though, she has a fair point.

“Well, you could at least guide me back! I’m tired and I’m not used to flying first thing in the morning!” I shout in return.

“Weren’t you having a lot of fun yesterday?”

“Yeah, when it’s voluntary! Not when I just wake up and realize that I sleepwalked- I mean, flew- out the WINDOW?!” 

She puts her hand on her chin and thinks for a little before stretching her arms out. 

“Alright. Flap your arms towards me until you can grab my hands. Then I’ll pull you back in!” 

Obviously not wanting to be stuck outside floating all day, I nod and move desperately swimming through the air.

“Gotcha!” She exclaims. I put my feet on the windowsill and jump through, almost landing on top of Adelia. I pat the ground multiple times before sighing in relief. It feels nice to be back on the floor, especially when I accidentally float. How does that even happen? I guess it’s harder to control than I thought, especially when I panic.

“Maybe next time you should close the windows, since apparently I sleep-float.” I mumble while rolling around on the floor. Silver crosses her arms and sighs. She does that a lot lately.

“The maids will probably be suspicious of that request since Adelia insists on keeping her windows open, especially in the summer. Unless you have a good enough excuse.” She rolls her eyes. Is she challenging me? I pause and stare at her until I get an idea.

“As a matter of fact, I can think of something.” I say with a cheeky smile. “What if you told them you were afraid that someone might come into your room and kill you, since you’ve been really unlucky lately.” It’s a good answer, since it’s totally possible. 

I can see Silver tense up. I can tell that she’s genuinely worried about that happening.

“Fine. You can never be too safe I guess.” She sighs again. How many times is she gonna sigh?! She must be really sick of all these events happening huh. I mean, it only happened two times, but I’m pretty sick of it too. No, not just sick of it. Scared.

After all, if the human dies, the spirit dies along with them.

We hear a knock on the door. Adelia and I both turn towards the noise. 

“Come in!” Adelia hollers.

The door opens. It’s the head maid. She bows. Everyone’s so formal here, bowing to others and calling them “my lady”. It makes me feel out of place. 

Well, if they were able to see me, I would definitely look out of place, especially with the clothes I’m wearing from our time.

“Lady Adeline! You’re awake! I’ve come to inform you that breakfast is ready.” She smiles. “I let you sleep in today since you have nothing on your schedule. The rest of the family has already eaten.”

“Thank you. I will be there momentarily. Please call the other maids to assist me while I’m dressing.” Adelia smiles back at her. All this elegant talk must be difficult, but it looks like it comes so easily for her. I mean, she has Adeline’s memories. Eh, that’s just an excuse. I could just be too stupid to think of all these fancy on the spot like that.

After Adelia changes out of her clothes, We head off to the dining room. When we get there, the first thing I notice is how long the table is. It’s probably for when the Viscount has guests over, but still?! The family eats there everyday! Doesn’t it feel kind of… menacing? In some way? Or is it just my urban middle class mentality getting in the way, I have no idea.

Anyways, I take a look around. Once I get a good look at it, the dining room is huge! Actually, this whole house is huge! It looks so much smaller than the outside, and the only thing I’ve really got a good look at was Adelia’s bedroom. I guess this place just has a small amount of large rooms instead of a large amount of small rooms.

Seems kind of excessive and a bad idea, to be honest. Like why? Why would you need a twelve-foot-long dining table?

I shifted my attention to the walls. There are some paintings on the walls of this old guy and this old woman. Oh, here was another old guy and another old woman. Oh and guess what I found. More paintings of an old guy and an old woman. 

These paintings are probably portraits of the family, and the younger looking old guy and lady must be Adeline’s parents. Imagine having those huge paintings staring at you while you eat, like, don’t they usually hang it out in the halls? Wait, then I would be terrified to walk around the halls at night. Yup. This is menacing as hell. 

I fly up to the ceiling and hang upside down. I can feel Silver glaring a hole through the back of my head. She’s probably upset that I’m doing something “impolite”, but it isn’t rude if no one can see me doing it, just like when I cheat on my tests-

Just kidding! Silver would never let me do that! If I did that, she would notify the teacher in some way immediately! What a killjoy, but I learned a lot of things the right way, thanks to her, I guess. Gotta give her some credit. 

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Anyways, I fly closer towards the enormous chandelier to get a better look at it. It’s like a couple of inches bigger than me and nearly takes up half of the height. There are a lot of candles arranged neatly around it. They’re out right now since the light from the windows are filling up the whole room, but how do they light up the chandeliers at night? Maybe a really long ladder? Would the spirits hold it still?

Thinking about it, I still don’t know if spirits exist in this era.

Back in our time, there was this tower that everyone called The Lighthouse. It sort of was the powerhouse for the spirits. They only existed thanks to the power from The Lighthouse. If The Lighthouse lost their light or power, all the spirits would disappear into thin air, as if they never existed in the first place.  

Adelia never mentioned them in the books she read here, nor can I see a huge tower looking thing that creates them. So I don’t even know if there are any other spirits here besides me-

I get a sudden chill as I’m floating around, hand on my chin. I look down to see Adelia give me a look that says “Get down here right now or you’re dead”. I quickly fly down and stop right before I run into the table. I notice that she’s already finished dining since the plate is scraped clean.

Maybe one day I’ll be able to eat again too.

Nope! Stop getting all dejected Cynthia! There's no point to it. I shake my head to get all the bad thoughts out of my head. Adelia gets up from the table, and I trail behind her as she exits the room.

There’s a lot of maids around today. I guess they always start cleaning after the nobles eat because then the nobles usually don’t leave their rooms for a while. Too bad we ate late. 

I wanted to ask Silver about the spirits here, but now we can’t talk until we get away. Honestly, it was kind of annoying. 

Maybe if I made something invisible and drew their attention away, I could talk to her. Urgh, if only I could knock things over-

[CRASH!]

I let out an ear splitting shriek as I flinch back, shielding my head with my arms. Dust fills the air and I let out a hiccup in reply.

My ears are ringing and my hands wont stop trembling. What the hell? Something just fell. What was it? Is everyone okay? 

What happened to Adelia?

I manage to force my eyes open slowly.

Within my blurry vision, I can recognize that shine of the gold, now broken and mangled on the floor. It’s like a smaller version of the chandelier from the kitchen! One of the lamps from the ceiling had crashed down, aiming right for Silver’s head.

It hadn’t hit her… Had it?

My shaking pupils finally focus on the shine of silver hair. I quickly scan the area around me. I can’t see red, so there’s no blood, I think. The ringing in my ears dull, and I start to hear the desperate and terrified cries of the maids.

I manage to locate Adelia’s arm and finally pull her wrist back, even if the danger is far over already. 

“Are you okay?! Did it hit you?!” I grab her face with my hands and move it right to left, no place left unscanned. The nearby maids who were washing the windows and the other lamps also rush to her in panicked scampers.

“... I think I’m fine. What a shocking development.” She says, exhaling her words as if it was stuck in her throat. Still, she manages to smile nonchalantly towards the maids right after. Well, tries to, at least.

… Is she seriously brushing off another barely avoided death? Silver must have nerves of steel, or maybe it’s just her brain lagging, trying to process what just happened. Wait, this means that she isn’t even safe in her own house! Can whatever is trying to kill us give her a break already?!

Her eyes lit up as if she has an idea. I eye her skeptically as she says, “I-I’m afraid of the possibility of this happening again today. I think I should take a walk in the garden to calm down. Please check all the other lamps and make sure the screws are tightened.” She winks at me and the gears in my head click, matching up with her plan. Finally! We can get some time to talk. I pray that the maids won’t deny her order. Although if they do, she can just order them again, but security would definitely be tightened after that.

“Of course, Lady Adeline! You must be shaken up by this sudden event. Perhaps it might be better to head out to the garden to compose your thoughts,” One of the maids says in a shaky voice. 

“And we will get the lamps checked immediately!” Another maid chimes in.

“Thank you.” Adelia lightly nods toward the maids before standing up. She slightly stumbles and the maids rush to her before she waves them off. She flicks her fingers subtly, motioning for me to walk with her. As soon as she opens the back door, a flurry of light blinds me for a couple of seconds, and it takes me some time to adjust to my surroundings, but once I do, my breath is taken away.

This garden is absolutely massive. There are flowers blooming everywhere I look, and yet it’s rather organized instead of chaotic. Maybe because of the hedges surrounding the edges. Pfft, the rhyme. On the right, there’s a white bench swing under a tree, rocking back and forth. 

I look over at Adelia to see if she’s also feeling that indescribable emotion I hold. In contrast to my expression, she just has a bland look on her face

She says nothing as she walks over to the bench. I watch her curiously as she sits down elegantly and takes in a deep breath.

“OH MY GOD! I ALMOST DIED AGAIN?!” She yells, grabbing my shoulders. Ah, so she was shaken up by it. I mean, who wouldn’t be?! 

“Why does this keep happening?! Like seriously! At this point I’m just gonna get used to it. This is happening way too often!” She wraps her arms around herself protectively as she leans back on the swing. She sighs. I sigh as well. 

I thought it was really cool to see a place so different and yet so similar to ours. I thought it’d be a nice thing to learn about before we went home and I became normal again, but perhaps I got our priorities mixed up.

I mean, Adelia has almost died three times now, and it hasn’t even been three days yet! This was becoming scary. I don’t want to lose her. I don’t want to die either.

Maybe we should actually focus on how to get home instead of messing around here. But where do we start?

“Okay, so let’s think about how we can improve our ranking here.” She says, spinning towards me. “Don’t worry, I think we’ll be able to find more information about this place. Maybe even how to get back home if we follow the church plan. As much as I hate to admit it, your idea is a good one.”

“What? I-I wasn’t-” I sputter. How did she know what I was thinking?

“Please. It was obvious that you were worried about it. You’re an open book you know.” She says with a taunting smile. I scowl at her. But if she has an idea for killing two birds at once...

“Anyways! How do we join the church in the first place? We need to somehow become priests or something, right?” I cross my arms.

“Yup, and to become a priest, we need to get a degree in Theology, which takes at least four years.” She says. “That sounds like a huge pain, and I'm not even sure where to begin. Perhaps we can help around the city and be recognized by the higher ups. That way, we could have a chance at becoming the Saintess, or at least get close to them and earn their trust from then on! And that all starts by doing a big, easily recognizable, deed.”

“Aaaaand how big of a deed would we have to do?”

“Well, let’s see… The past Saint could heal anyone with his vast knowledge of medical skills, and the Saintess behind him was an animal whisperer…”

“So…?”

“So, basically as big as finding a cure for cancer.”

“Awww come on! How are we ever going to do something that important?! You’re not even that capable of anything in the first place!” I shout, adding a snicker at the end.

“As if you’re any more reliable.” Silver snaps back. “Anyways, why don’t we just start with the community service idea to at least gain some reputation within the town, and then-”

The door slams open.

Adelia and I both jump, hoping that person didn’t hear any of our conversation just now.

We stretch our necks cautiously to check who it is, but all we hear is the voice of a shadowy figure behind the door.

“Lady Adeliiinnneee!~” 

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