Indigo: Abraham, Emotion Vol. 1: Emotion, Chapter Four: "Anomie"

Chapter Four: Anomie

            The emptiness had come suddenly.  Even Isaac seemed surprised by how quickly the grasslands gave way to sand dunes and the baking heat of the sun, and Ellen had believed him unflappable.  When she asked him about it, though, he explained it away by saying it only seemed sudden, but the change had been gradual.  Looking back at the desert behind them, Ellen wasn’t so sure.

            Her shoes were full of sand, and each step made it worse.  Behind them they left a bread crumb trail of footprints.  They traversed over sand dunes large and small, walked through harsh, dusty winds, and still seemed no closer to their destination.  Eventually, Ellen’s legs gave out, and she fell forward and cut her knees.

            Isaac stopped and held out his hand.  “Come on, we’ll be there soon.”   Even as she accepted his hand, Ellen knew he didn’t mean it.  Still, she felt comfort in his grasp.  He was strong, and if anyone could protect her, she wanted to believe that he could.

            She kept holding his hand as they continued forward, and if he was surprised by that, it didn’t show.  He just stared ahead, his finger wounded tightly around hers, as they crested another dune.  At apex they stopped and took in the sight before them.

            Dark clouds choked the sky and floated above a series of large, rusted oil refineries.  They stood, stalwart but decomposing, their steel dulled by the constant erosion they faced.  It looked to Ellen like a city of decay, with each refinery being older than the last.  Isaac went tense in front of her.

            “What’s wrong?”  She squeezed his hand again but felt him pull away.  “Do you see something?”

            Isaac wiped his brow and shook his head.  He squinted and sweated in the sun, which hadn’t moved since their arrival.  “No,” he said, shaking his head again, and he looked at her.  “No, I don’t see anything.”  He smiled.  “I just,” Looking back at the refineries, he went quiet, and then he frowned.  “We just need to find another way through.”

            Ellen squint up at the sun and then looked at the shadows cast by the refineries.  She looked at the empty wasteland around her.  “I don’t think there’s anywhere else.”

            “We can’t go there.”

            “Maybe we could rest there?”  She tried to take his hand again.  It was sudden, she knew, but she wanted to help him like he helped her and didn’t know how.  “Why would that be so bad?”

            He swallowed and stared quietly.  His lips were chapped and his skin dusty.  After a long moment of the wind whipping at his shirt and pressing the sweaty garment flat to his chest, he sighed.  “You’re right.  We have nowhere else to go, do we?”

            “Not really.”

            He sucked in the air and then fell into a fit of coughs.  Then, he pointed forward.  “Then we move forward.”

            She nodded.  “Okay,” she said, but when she looked at the refineries, she felt a sense of dread.  She looked at him again.  “But, just out of curiosity, why didn’t you want to go there in the first place?”  He looked at her, shrugged, and started down the sand.  She followed at him.  “Isaac, why?”

            He looked back at her and put on a grin.  “It was just a bit creepy.  That’s all.”  He offered his hand again.  “Come on.”

            Ellen didn’t believe him, his smile or his words, but she took his hand and let him lead her ahead.  Whatever was there, and wherever they were, Isaac clearly didn’t trust her to keep calm or at least didn’t want to make her worry.  They were both in a desperate situation, she figured, so she would keep quiet and do her best to stand strong while she could.  He had enough to think about and didn’t need her to worry over, too.

: EMOTION :

            “So,” Ellen began, walking a short distance behind Isaac as he led her toward the oil field.  He moved purposefully and kept his gaze fixed ahead while she walked more slowly, searching her surroundings for any sign of life.  The area was desolate, and the oil refineries before them felt deeply oppressive.  “What is this Emotion place, anyway?”

            Isaac smirked back at her.  He had his hands buried into his jacket pockets and his head down against the wind.  “The Emotion is the heart of God,” he said, and it sounded almost like a joke, but Ellen didn’t know what part of it was supposed to be funny.  “More accurately, though, it’s our plant’s soul.”

            “Our planet’s soul?”

            “Yeah.  All things are composed of three forms: body, soul, and spirit.  Body is physical, spirit is the spark of life—energy—and the soul is what binds it together.”

            “Uh-huh.  If that’s true, then how did we get here?”

            Isaac shrugged. “Honestly, I’m not really sure.  Maybe that little girl did something?”

            “Abraham?”

            “Yeah.  Her.  Maybe she led us here.”

            Ellen pursed her lips and thought on it.  She remembered hearing Abraham voice just before she woke, remembered feeling her faint warmth as the world was going cold.  Just before waking up, Ellen felt a dark chill, colder than water, colder than winter.  Thinking back on it, she might have been dying.

            “Okay, then how do we get home?”

            “That, I don’t know.  For now, we should focus on getting everyone together. Your friend, the brunette, and her friend.  They’re both here.”

            Ellen knew immediately that the brunette meant Alex.  She didn’t know who Alex’s friend was.  Alex had so few friends, and she couldn’t imagine who would have followed them there except Carolyne, who hardly counted as a friend after what happened.  In fact, Ellen had her doubts if Carolyne was even human.

            “Hey, I have another question.  That sword thing Carolyne had, what was it?”

            “Carolyne?”

            “The girl who was there chasing Alex and me.  Did you see her?”

            “Her.”  Isaac nodded.  “Yeah, I saw her.  That sword was her Voice.  It’s like a—Well, it’s a physical representation of someone’s soul.  Or, a physical extension?  It allows your soul to act on the physical world.”

            “And Voices are weapons?”

            “Not necessarily.  They take many different shapes, though the few I’ve seen were weapons, which is odd.  My father always said that they took on the form most appropriate for the person.”

            Ellen could see that.  Carolyne, whatever she was, clearly wanted to kill.  Ellen looked at her hands.  “Why don’t I have a Voice?”

            “Not everyone has them.  Only people with strong enough souls can do it, can reach out and shape the world.  I don’t know what exactly determines it.  May just be random chance or luck.”  He looks at her and winks.  “Not that you aren’t special in your own way.”

            She smirked in return.  Isaac was sweet, if a bit corny, and he seemed to have his head on.  He didn’t know everything, but he at least had a direction, and that was more than Ellen did.  Just listening to him talk was a comfort.

            They fell quiet when they reached the oil refineries.  The air here smelled thick of smoke and machines and was at odds with the fresh scent of the prairie which was still stuck in her mind.  Even the warm, dusty scent of the desert which surrounded them was overpowered by this oily haze.  It suffocated Ellen and made her feel trapped.

            She remembered lying still with Abraham warm at her side while everything else became so cold.  It hurt to breathe, hurt to focus, hurt to be.  Everything was draining out of her with each pump of her heart, and she was willing it to stop pumping, but it wouldn’t listen.  Her fingers went numb, and her toes, and she fell unconscious.

            Ellen pushes the thoughts away and breathed through the smoke.  The refineries stopped the wind at least, and she took the chance to adjust her hair and pat the dust from her clothes.  She stared at Isaac’s back, and she laughed to herself.  “Hey, Isaac, I was wondering...”

            “Yeah?”

            She put on a smile.  “You single by any chance?”

            He came to a hard stop and scowled.  His fingers flexed and light collected in his palms, and it shined so brightly that she had to wince.  When she recovered the light had faded into two bladed rings, one in each hand.

            Ellen peeked around him and saw nothing.  She looked back at saw nothing.  They were surrounded by steel on all sides and, past that, sand.  “Something wrong?”

            Isaac moved carefully through the sand, surveying the area as he went.  “I feel something, someone.”  He glanced at her.  “Did you feel it?  Like we’re being watched.”

            “Um.”  Ellen looked around again.  She hadn’t felt anything at all other than playful.  The smog around her made it hard to keep her head clear of anything but darkness and industry, but Isaac’s turn put her on edge.  He had seemed so calm, so collected, but now he was on fire.  Something set him off and a part of her worried it was her.

            She looked at the blades in his hand, his Voices.  They were different from Carolyne’s but still deadly in their own right, she was sure.  Looking at them comforted Ellen, though.  He seemed more a protector than a hunter.  He stood before her with his back turned, watching the world for a threat.  Carolyne had pointed her Voice straight at her chest and meant to kill.

            Isaac stood still for a long while with Ellen at his eyes.  He waited, listening to something that Ellen couldn’t even hear.  His body was tense and his fingers bound tightly about the grips of his Voices.  Then, his eyes widened and he turned to move her aside as a large, armor clad figure appeared from the sky and landed in the area they previously occupied.  Dust kicked up around him and steel met steel.  The sound of it echoed around the rusted ruins of the oil barrens.

            The dust settled to reveal a tall, stout man clad in plate and carrying a sword with a blade nearly as tall as he was.  His blade was balanced between Isaac’s chakrams, which were pinched together.  Isaac had his feet planted, light swelling around him as he repelled the on-coming attack.

            Isaac shoved the man off with a grunt and watched him stumble back.  The man staggered flat-footedly, his plate cumbersome and dusty.  In the haze, Carolyne saw Ellen for a brief second, and then saw the hysteria that that had seized the tiny woman.  She saw Carolyne’s Voice shining in her mind.  Ellen retreated from the battle, screaming and sprinting away as fast as her legs would take her.  She could hear Isaac shouting after her but paid him no mind.

            “No, Ellen.  No!  We don’t know if he’s alone!  Come...”  His words died as she ducked under another attack and, as he righted himself, she was gone.

            Another attack came in, and Isaac rolled under it and into a metal stand of a refinery.  The man stalked forward, armor gleaming dully in the dim light.  Isaac hadn’t felt him until just before the initial attack.  If he had, then it never would have come to melee combat.  If he had, Ellen never would have been in danger.

            The man swung horizontally and cleaved the refinery’s leg into pieces.  Isaac ducked under and rounded around, moving under the refinery where the man was too big to follow.  He moved between rusted bars to the other side, and the man followed him slowly.

            A vertical swing left Isaac staggered and another broke his defense.  The next missed narrowly, and Isaac stumbled around in the sand to escape.  It was different from with Riis.  This man was bigger than Isaac and careful in how he fought.  He didn’t leave as many openings and didn’t waste energy.  Every move was precise, tight, and controlled.  To win, Isaac would have to be equally decisive.

            He pushed Ellen out of his mind and put distance between himself and his enemy.  The man clanked forward, panting in the desert heat.  The sand had him slowed and his armor left his movement limited.  Isaac wouldn’t be able to kill from a distance, but it at least gave him time to think.

            He waited and then moved in, ducking under another attack and kicked the man in the foot.  The man stumbled in the sand and gave Isaac the opportunity to catch him in the arm.  Isaac punched upward into the man’s bicep, planting the chakram blade between the plates.

            The man stumbled and fell forward into the sand.  His sword landed beside him and slid down the shallow incline in the fine sand.  Isaac planted his foot onto the man’s shoulder and pushed into the sand before looking up to find Ellen.  As he stepped away, he met an invisible wall.

            Isaac put his hands forward and was met by something solid though seemingly insubstantial.  The man laughed beneath him, pushing up to kneeling and greeting Isaac with a dusty smile.  “Looks like you aren’t going anywhere.”

            Isaac glared. Energy flowed into his Voices, which gleamed at his sides.  “What is this? What are you doing?”

            “Me?  Nothing.”  The man chuckled.  “That is the Iron Heart.”

: EMOTION :

            Ellen found refuge on a nearby refinery.  She climbed it without thinking and hid behind its large, rounded oil drum at the top.  Rust colored the steel around her, and each creak made her footsteps subtler.  It held her, but she didn’t trust it still.

            She came to a rest against a rusty guard rail and supported herself against it while gathering her breath.  Isaac was still back there, fighting, perhaps even dying, but she couldn’t bring herself to go back.  Even if she could, the battle would just get her killed as well.  Isaac was stronger than her and endowed with a Voice.  She would just get in the way.

            She peeked around the rounded form of the refinery and found Isaac standing in the sand over his enemy.  His hands were bloody, but she was sure it wasn’t his own blood.  The sight of it made her skin crawl.  She didn’t like the fury written in his features, and she disliked seeing his weapons stained red even more, but she was happy to see he was alive.

            “Thank God,” she said, and she settled with her back to the refinery and took another deep breath.  The air smelled of oil and smoke still and, now closer, it also smelled of rust and steel.

            “God had nothing to do with it,” someone said from the other side.  It was a woman, with a deep, solemn voice devoid of inflection.  Ellen went rigid and peeked around again, and she stood and sprinted the other way, back toward the stairs.  The woman was there waiting.

            She was tall, slender, and very composed.  Her skin was dark, as was her hair, and her eyes with a bright, empty blue.  They looked to Ellen like a clear blue sky, devoid of anything at all.  She wore a dark dress, widow’s rags her mother might call it, and her lips were twisted in a half-hearted smile that looked tired more than anything else.

            Ellen’s foot slipped, and she fell forward onto her knees.  She looked up to find the woman watching her and pushed herself to standing.  As she did, the woman looked away, turning her attention to the battle going on.  She muttered an absent, “Hello,” as she did.

            In the distance Ellen could hear the battle continuing.  She heard grunts and shouts but couldn’t make them out.  Isaac’s voice cut through it, strong and clear, and she liked to think he was winning.  The woman was watching still, wholly composed and without opinion.  Ellen watched her for a sign of danger.

            “Who are you,” Ellen said once she caught her breath.  She kept herself steady against the oil refinery’s central barrel.  Flakes of rust collapsed at her touch.

            “Deidra,” the woman said, and she glanced.  “Come over here and watch with me.”  The woman turned her attention back to the battle once more.

            Ellen swallowed and approached.  She could try to escape but figured the woman could catch her anyway.  As she rounded the refinery’s platform she saw Isaac and the man in the distance.  Their fight looked nothing like the movies.  Both were clumsy and their blows didn’t make the right sounds.  Both were breathing heavily, too.

            Isaac kept distance between, closing only to make quick strikes and retreat.  The man, meanwhile, was feral.  He was a storm of slashes and often missed.  Whenever his blade clipped the sand beneath them it was tossed into the air as he made another swipe.  It was almost like a dance if neither of them knew the proper movements.

            Deidra pointed.  Her fingers were longer and elegant and her nails unclipped.  “Do you know that boy?”

            “Yes, but not well.  We’ve only just met.”

            “Here in the Emotion?”

            Ellen nodded and approached slowly to stand beside Deidra.  “Yes.  Do you know who that is attacking him?”

            Deidra nodded, too.  Ellen stared at her now, saw how beautiful and tired she was.  Up close, she looked older than Ellen had initially figured her to be.

            “Can you stop him?”

            Deidra looked at her now with those blank eyes.  Her face moved, expressed anger, but her eyes didn’t commit.  They remained empty.  The woman shook her head and let her mouth tighten, and she looked away.  “You have no place in this world.”

            Silence settled, save for the wind and the groan of the steel and the battle in the distance.  Ellen picked at the rusty handrail and considered Deidra’s words, and she knew they were true.  Ellen had no Voice, she had no power, and she definitely didn’t understand what the Emotion was.  She was weak and frail, and after everything she had been through, the only thing she can do consistently is get people hurt.

            “Cornelius,” Deidra said, her voice carrying and bouncing between the platforms.  “Cease your assault. We’re leaving.”  Deidra gathered her dress, which was beautifully crafted but worn with age, and she turned.  Her movements were graceful and precise but seemed to tire her further.  She stopped on the ramp, her hand on the railing, and looked back at Ellen.  “You take care of Isaac, will you?”  Then, she turned and left.

            Ellen watched the man in armor—Cornelius, she figured—retreat from the battle.  Isaac was watching the man’s retreat, too.  At some point when Ellen wasn’t watching, Isaac had suffered a shallow cut across his cheek, and he was still breathing heavily.

            Both Deidra and Cornelius disappeared into the desert and once they were gone, Ellen found Isaac searching for her in the oil field.  They met with a hug, and he lifted her from the sand and spun her about before planting her back down.  “Ellen!”

            “I’m sorry I ran,” she said.  “I was scared and I...”  She touched his cheek; he winced.  “Are you okay?”

            “Fine,” he said, and he smiled like Deidra did.  He wore it better than her, but it still didn’t carry to his eyes.  “What about you?”

            “Fine.”

            He wiped away the blood from his cheek and looked out at the desert around them.  “Glad that’s over.  Who were they, though?”

            Ellen shrugged.

            “Well, whatever.”  He looked at the black, smoky clouds that pool about like water, and he frowned.  “Can’t feel a thing here.  We should leave before they come back, yeah?”

            Ellen nodded.  As they left, she glanced back at the oil platform where Deidra had watched from, at its rusty steel plating.  Isaac took her hand and led her back out into the blazing sun and off into the horizon.

: EMOTION :

            They walk in silence through the sand.  The wind picks up, tossing Ellen’s hair and leaving her squinting.  Like little shards of glass, the sand digs into her flesh, and she lifts her hands to cover her eyes.  Isaac does the same, and she struggles to follow his back in the sandstorm.

            Thoughts of Deidra return to her.  She seems somewhat familiar to Ellen, though the young woman was sure they had never met before.  She considered asking Isaac but decided against it.  He had a lot on his mind and seemed to blame himself for everything that happened.

            They move through the sandstorm, keeping as close as they can.  Isaac moves with greater purpose now, head down against the wind.  Unlike her, it doesn’t seem to hurt him, or if it does, he doesn’t let it show.  He is colder now, focused, having become a man on the mission.

            They keep walking until the wind dies down and crest a grassy hill, where they stop to catch their breath.  Ellen realized then that the desert heat had faded and, looking back, saw only an expanse of ripe, green hills stretching out behind and before her, dotted with little white ruins.  The sun had faded from the sky and now the moon watched them.

            Ellen caught Isaac looking back as well.  They made eye contact and held there, suspended in time.  She stood and dusted herself off best as she could, and she smiled.  He turned forward again and started down the hill, taking the first step.  After that, he didn’t look back again.