Oujda, Morocco
“Mom, Dad, please stay with me! I still need you…” She was unconsciously weeping.
On a Gloomy morning, Emmy woke up sweating, her heart throbbing loudly and her fragile bones shivering in an uncontrolled motion with glistering tears on her cheeks and trembling like a newborn chick.
She hardly opened her sore eyes. She swallowed her anguish placidly and comforted herself that it was just another nerve-vexing, hideous and wicked nightmare she had been having. Sadly, her reality was the same.
She caught the sound of doors slamming and people murmuring downstairs. The noise and the hazy sunrays aroused her and transfixed her sight over the solid black funeral suit above her dressing table. The tale of woe was true: a few hours ago, she lost her parents in a brutal car crash.
Emmy was a twenty-year-old young girl with a timid smile. When she blushed, her cheeks matched her scorching red hair, resembling orange sunsets over the horizon which made her look as if she were on fire. She was a fine tall person with deep ocean-like blue eyes and a pointy nose. She was a sober girl with an air of a decided fashion. She was bright and high-spirited, loved to talk, and was extremely goal-oriented.
Emmy plunged into the photographs on her cactus-like wallpaper that alleviated her aches yet stirred up the painful fact that they were no longer around. The picture in the middle had been recently taken at her birthday party, where all her relatives and her friends gathered. Lights and balloons were everywhere. Some swayed to the jazz music; others laughed endlessly while smudging one another with the leftover chocolate cake.
She was wearing a green puffy-sleeved dress, which went well with her flaming hair. She primped her butterfly-like collarbone with a locket necklace made of silver. The sun of that memory never left her. Suddenly, her phone rang bringing the fairy tale to an end. She inhaled deeply and fell down. How could she overcome this? How could she not but be delicate? How could she thrive after this? She could not prevent the cultivation of her imagination to relive again and again the agony. Her parent’s laughs echoed repetitiously as if she was deep in water.
“I must leave” she uttered, trembling and shaking traumatically as she jumped out of her attic window to the unknown.
Emmy’s family lived in a peaceful town in the expanse of a green land, where there were more farm hoes than anywhere, adjacent to a giant rectangular barn. You could smell the straw only a few feet away. Dream, her horse that had soft eyes that reflected loyalty and love, muscled with a gorgeous chestnut coat, used to spend time with her cantering in a field full of rose and white tulips.
She headed out without a destination, wandering, seeking her salvation in the embrace of nature. She wore the black sneakers gifted by her dad, navy jeans, and a yellow windbreaker jacket. She started running and continued until the oxygen ran out of her lungs.
Everything seemed demonically made. From the skeleton-like branches to the ghosts howling in the wind to the woods creeping. Clouds gathered ominously, and the weather changed more quickly than she had anticipated. She heard the heavy distant thunderstorm coming and decided to go back home; however, she could not recall the way back.
Seeing a hollow tree, she ran to it as her last refuge from the storm. She hid there waiting for the storm to calm down. In the depth of despair, she wished all of this would come to end, but it did not. If only she could go back to her peaceful childhood where she used to play in the mud and climb trees. She thought.
“I just want to be distracted from the mire of my haunting thoughts,” she mourned endlessly.
A few hours later, a brown tree snake approached her and bit her. Emmy felt dizzy, and a mild local irritation formed around the wound. She fainted.
Being gone for three days, she assumed her relatives would think that she was hurt or even worse dead. This thought added to her anxiety. Three mornings later, she finally opened her beautiful eyes to find herself surrounded by solitary, fascinating, and glowing creatures staring at her surprisingly. The sun cast its lights into the dwarf house.
A sparkling colorful fairy tale creature said, “You are in an invisible world, a kingdom of spirits commissioned to guard you. “
Emmy could not believe what was happening to her.
Frightened, she murmured, “The snaaa… there was a snake … am I dead? Is this heaven? Dad, Mom I came to you.”
A Unicorn said, “Shall we make her our queen? She is pretty. “
Voices rose.
“Please someone tell me the truth,” Emmy said.
“You have been asleep for a week. Our king, the Phoenix, has brought you here. You were wounded. “
“I’m puzzled, your king! The Phoenix? “
“Come! To see for yourself.”
Thousands of wonders howled in her head.
The fairy tale creature told her about a worshipper, a man with a wide-open heart who had dedicated his life to charity and kindness. God rewarded him and turned him into an immortal Phoenix, a magnificent flaming creature whose tears are therapeutic. He had a colorful plumage and a tail in blue, purple, green, gold, and scarlet. He would rise after burning himself every 500 years.
“He is the one who has saved my life each time. All the vague and blurry images I had been dreaming about. It was him. Thank God I’m not insane after all as my colleges claim.”
Emmy’s life changed unpredictably. She decided to live there for the rest of her life to learn about their lineage. She made up her mind to keep her new heavenly home, a secret only she and God know.
The end.
