Samie Sands - Through Space and Time

“What was that?” Raegan hissed.

“I don’t know, but I think that just answered our question for us. We need to get out of here…”

Raegan nodded sharply and went to move but couldn’t. Her legs were stuck. She tried to call out to Miguel who’d gone a few steps ahead of her, but her lips were stuck together too. She felt ice-cold as if she’d been frozen but was still aware.

For one heart-stopping moment, that’s what she thought had happened.

“Who are you?” a bold. yet incredibly feminine voice boomed. “What do you want?”

Raegan couldn’t even see who was talking, her neck remained stuck in position.

“We… we…” Miguel simpered.

The pain in her chest wasn’t just for herself, she didn’t just want to be free so she could defend herself against whatever threat had come her way. It was for Miguel too, painfully so. A part of her would die if anything happened to him.

This is why I shouldn’t get attached , she thought sadly. But it’s too late for that now.

“What are you doing here?” the woman yelled again. “What do you want with us?”

“N… nothing. We came here by mistake… it wasn’t supposed to…”

“Shut up!” She cut Miguel off. “I do not want to hear your lies. “You have come here to take things from us, to steal our way of life. Which will not happen!”

The next time Miguel spoke, he had a trance quality to his voice. This almost tore Raegan apart. If any of her could move, she would’ve fallen apart.

“Our world has ended. War destroyed us,” he said as if his voice box no longer belonged to him. “The fabric of time and space split apart to save some of us from the nuclear blast.”

Save ? Was that possible? Raegan had never thought of it like that before. She simply viewed it as bad luck.

“We travel through exit holes in an attempt to find our world again, but I fear it will not happen. I am afraid that we will travel until we die.”

“Hmm, that must be the truth,” the woman continued. “Because you are under my magic which has never let me down before. But why keep running? Why not settle somewhere new? A nuclear blast will have torn your planet apart. There is nothing to go back to.”

Those words caused a sob to freeze in Raegan’s throat. She hated how accurate they were. She’d been clinging to this hope, pinning everything on it, but it may not be right. This might be a fight not worth battling.

But Dad , she reminded herself. I still need to find Dad.

“It is not home. We need home.”

“You clearly destroyed your home. This is all your fault.”

“Humans did make mistakes, but we will learn a lesson from this. It won’t happen again.”

All of a sudden, Raegan felt herself falling uncontrollably. The ground rose to meet her face and she lay there in a heap. It hurt, but she was too relieved that she could move again to care.

“We just… we just want to leave,” Raegan gasped out through a ragged raw sensation in her throat. “We don’t want any trouble. This isn’t our home. We just want to move on.”

She darted her eyes upright to see the most stunning looking woman she’d ever seen. Long blonde hair cascaded around her curvy waist, her cleavage popped up nicely by her sweetheart shaped face. Her plump red lips curled into a smile, and a little black dress skimmed the tops of the longest legs Raegan had ever seen.

She was gorgeous and a little too close to Miguel. It was all too much.

Raegan gulped back a bitter ball of bile that lodged itself in her throat. Jealousy wasn’t useful, it wasn’t needed, there were so many better things she could feel… but it was as if this woman had brought out the worst in her and now, she couldn’t switch it off.

“You see, don’t you?” The witch pointed a finger at Raegan. “That’s why I froze you at first. You can see right through me. You know that I do not speak your language, it’s simply how you perceive it, and you know that I am not my usual form, but I am pleasing to your eyes. You know more than you let on.”

As soon as those words left her mouth, Raegan knew that she was right. She had ascertained that much with ease. Her years alone had taught her always to be careful.

“Yes,” she jutted her chin out. “I knew.”

“Exactly.” The woman’s form began to change, but the whole world became too dark for Raegan to work out what she was becoming. The deep chill in the pit of her stomach was enough of a warning though. This wasn’t going to be good. “And that is why you pose such a danger to us, why you need to be controlled.”

Raegan looked at Miguel and he stared right back. Both of them knew it, this could be the end.

If only they’d said all of the things that they really needed to say.

What the…? Raegan’s head ached as her eyes flickered open. Where am I?

Her hand scooched to one side and relief flooded her as she felt Miguel. She didn’t even need to turn her head to know it was him. He’d become almost as familiar to her as her own body.

“Ah, you are awake, at last. I wondered when my spell would wear off.”

Raegan bolted upright as a glimmer of memory came back. Her and Miguel found themselves in danger at the hands of a stunning woman…

Oh!

The person she found herself looking at now wasn’t the same. It seemed the form she’d chosen to greet them in was a fake one, to make her more pleasing. She hid her purplish spotty skin and her straggly dark hair which reached the ground. Her long legs had been replaced with tentacles which spread out as far as Raegan could see.

“I do not need to hide myself from you, because you know.”

“I know?” Raegan pushed herself into a standing position and moved in front of Miguel who remained passed out on the floor underneath her. She didn’t want to blame him for their current situation, but she never got captured alone! “Know what?”

“You are smart, you can see through deception. I can speak honestly.”

“Right. Honestly. Of course.”

She darted her eyes from side-to-side, drinking in the new environment surrounding them. No longer could they see the sky, they appeared to be surrounded by a dark, damp tunnel.

“Hi sunt, qui secum in finem mundi. Illi diabolus misit eos perdere…”

The voice didn’t just come from this one woman. It seemed to echo around her as if a hundred people spoke all at the same time. Raegan gulped, trying to swallow down fear. Terror would kill her more than the strange words being spoken.

“I thought you wanted to speak honestly,” she demanded. “Not words I can’t understand.”

“Omne quod scimus quia veniam ad finem.”

“Hey, stop that! I’m starting to get annoyed now. You want to talk then do it!” Raegan squeezed her fists together, trying really hard not to lose it completely. “I don’t want to be here, I just want to leave, but for some reason, you’ve made us stay…”

“You came here by mistake?” the woman asked, her ethereal voice shuddering through Raegan. “That’s what you’re telling me?”

“Yes! We fell through the exit hole without any knowledge of where it would take us. We didn’t want to end up here. Why would we want that ?”

“That’s what the last one said as well. He told us that he didn’t want to come.”