Deep Roots (Iris' Atlantis 2)

"Well. I have never before eaten fresher salad," I told the walls of the small cabin/hut/shed. There was a narrow bed and a small wooden shelf, and little else in the tight space. A simple reading light had been nailed to the wall. A small window behind my back gave hardly any illumination. I had known a worse shed.

"What do you say, Stump? Have you had fresher salad?"

The ghostly presence didn't answer. I wasn't sure it had heard.

It was dark inside, and dark outside. Clouds covered the skies. And the world seemed small. Heavy rain hit the roof and the sound was deafening. Trees swooshed. A storm had gathered.

My hand throbbed where Plume had sunk in his talons at the beginning of the train journey. It wasn't bleeding anymore though and Rose had given me fresh bandages for it. It would heal.

And Plume had flown back to the city. I hoped before the storm. He had come to see where I lived, and then he had returned, with a promise to visit.

"Just between the two of us, I miss him a bit, my nephew. I miss the vampire."

No answer.

I lay still, listening to the storm raging outside.

I wished I had taken a book with me. I had tried watching YouTube earlier, but apparently the internet connection wasn't strong enough for streaming. I hadn't been prepared for that.

Or for the snail.

Or to the fact that the shower took its time to warm up.

Or that the toilet was well aired.

I hadn't been prepared.

At all.

I knew how to study for an oncoming exam. I knew how to navigate the metro tunnels to the other side of the city for a specific shopping center. I knew how to talk to vampires, and how to get what I wanted from a witch town. I could survive an explosion and drink tea with a peculiar queen.

But I didn't have a clue as to how I was to pass the time in a small storm sieged shack.

Staring at the ceiling became slightly boring after a few hours. Even as the paint was peeling and there were the oddest stains included.

And I wasn't used to the company either.

Apart from being haunted by the presence of the man I had killed some years ago, there were spirits. Lots of them. If I concentrated on the shifting shapes, more a mass than individual beings, I would get seasick.. And I could feel there was life just outside the window. Birds, small rodents. I could feel it all just outside the simple small window.

I was used to sensing people. And of course there were many of them in a city, forming their own kind of shifting mass, a white noise of auras.

But the forest around me was different. Animal presences were different. Of course I had met a squirrel before. But the absence of the human din magnified them. They felt brighter, more intelligent. I could almost, just almost, distinguish something very much like feelings from the small mouse or vole that had crawled under the shed for shelter. I didn't know what it was. But I did know it felt. It thought.

Plus, there was something in the storm. Something big. As if the downpour had been alive as well, but distant in the far away skies.

Lightning cracked suddenly open the firmament and the tight space became illuminated by the flash. The rain seemed to gain even more vitality, beating the roof.

No one could sleep in a weather like this. Not here at least. Back in the city, it hadn't felt so... real.

So alive.