The Fifth Element
Epilogue

I spent three days in a room with white walls, on a white bed with white sheets, staring up at a white ceiling. On my first day there I spent most of the day sleeping, dreaming about a tall, gnarled tree amongst a field of gray grass, where trapped souls wondered aimlessly.

Lacy appeared in one of my dreams too, surrounded by a golden light. She had beautiful brown eyes and white wings sprouting from her back. She told me that in the end, she hadn’t wanted Vivian to be punished, she had just wanted her to get away from Hampton and be happy. After telling me that she had slowly faded away before I could ask her anything else.

On the morning of the second day I remembered that I had passed through the portal with someone, and later that afternoon I remembered that someone was Henry.

I begged the nurses to tell me what had happened to him, where he was now, but none of them seemed to know or at least pretended they didn’t. On the third day, two men that called themselves police came in and asked me a bunch of questions. I answered all of them, but they didn’t seem to be happy with any of my answers. After that, I was taken to a house to stay with a foster family, where I remain today.

It was the beginning of fall when I had first arrived here, and now it was the middle of winter, and a thick layer of snow covered the ground. I bet it was winter back home too. It was strange how different this world was to my own, yet so similar at the same time.

I still haven’t found out what had happened to Henry.

I still wasn’t used to the fact that no magic lingered in the air here, but I discovered that this world wasn’t completely without magic. I felt a slight tingle of it here and there, especially at a store called Hopkins’s Peculiar Interests and Hobbies. Stepping in there was almost like being back at home, almost.

Hopkins’s Peculiar Interests and Hobbies was a little run down store that sold well peculiar things. Things that ranged from old cloth dolls with pained looks on their faces, to animals floating in glass jars filled with murky liquid. I even found some books from my world, nothing special just a few old textbooks.

The owner, Mr. Hopkins, seemed to sense that there was something different about me. He made it a point to show me the books from my world if he got a new one when I came in, which was a lot. I went into the store any chance I got.

Sometimes my foster sister, Jemma, would tag along with me. Mostly she would just pick up something, make a face of disgust, before asking Mr. Hopkins a million questions about it. I liked Jemma when you were with her there was never a dull moment, but she was no replacement for the emptiness I felt for the ones back home.

Today, however, we had both decided to give the store a break and opted to watch Jemma’s brother and my foster brother, Jeff, and a couple of his friends play a quick pick-up game of football in the deep snow in a field behind the high school. Football, I learned, was almost identical to tackle ball, except more violence and less interesting to watch.

After about ten minutes of watching them roll around in the snow, I was bored to death, and my toes were beginning to freeze. I told Jemma that I was leaving, not that she cared too much. Her nose was buried deep in her phone.

I began to walk up the trail which ran through the woods in back of the high school and spat you back onto the street where my foster family’s house was.

I hadn’t been walking very long, my boots crunching on the snow until I noticed someone walking in front of me. As I got closer, I saw it was a boy. He was dressed in all black and was walking slowly with his hands deep in his pockets, very slowly. I sighed in annoyance when I caught up with him, and he was still moving slower than a turtle. It was going to take an hour to get back to the house at this rate.

“If you want to pass me, pass me I’m not going to walk faster just for you,” he said without warning, startling me. His voice was muffled by the scarf he had wrapped tightly around his neck.

I recovered and did as he suggested, “Jerk,” I mumbled, making a full circle him. I wasn’t sure what his problem was, but he wasn’t the one trapped in a different world and about to die of hypothermia.

I didn’t bother looking up at his face while I passed him, and I would never have if he hadn’t taken a sharp intake of breath and said. “Violet!?”

I stopped walking and snapped my head towards the boy. Two electric blue eyes stared back at me in surprise.

“Henry?”