Every one of the myriad of people were now awake and moving about, and judging from the crowd they all seemed as confused and shaken as her. Were they all victims to the same kidnapping? What was this stone thing in the center? Where were they?
Considering the current circumstances, she let her hand drift out of her pocket, away from the dissonant yet comforting touch of metal that she was now conscious was heavy in her pocket, and she was attempting to gain the courage to peel her body off the tree it was pressed against.
However, before she could get too far, the blonde and shorter girl began to approach the rock at the center of the clearing, and Lola cocked her head to the side as to express her curiosity. For a brief moment, she had the thought that touching the pillar in the middle, while aesthetic, would not be her first instinct, but as soon as the blonde girl touched the stone a terrifying, mesmerizing light show began. After a while of breathtaking and otherworldly glows, bright tethers, and flashes, a voice suddenly boomed from out of the treeline that enveloped the grass they all occupied.
"Arsh gal am Tor vashrak? Bah! Sek arsh gontir Orshta! Brasaval, Sidorak, Argush! Sidor am brekah!"
At first, the lights were magical, seemingly literally, and they made Lola audibly gasp; the magic and spells and rituals that she had performed before were philosophical, she never saw them as real magic but as mirrors into herself as a way to self-reflect. Yet, against her intuition, these lights seemed more than natural, they radiated something that can only be described as vibrations that she could feel in her bones, beyond her bones even. It was unnerving, dissonant, and beautiful, but as the voice boomed out she could feel all of those feelings sink into her stomach. Her mouth seemed to instantly dry, her vitality retreating into throat as if in fright, and the voice itself shook her in a way more like rumbling than vibration, a deeply unsettling tremor in her core.
Something snapped. It almost felt like a body part popping after being tense, but it was as if it was completely in her mind. Suddenly, abruptly, her vision faded; the sensation of falling, but falling in no particular direction, overcame her. She was drifting again. Again? Yes, she thought to herself, this is familiar.
She awoke, or rather gained form, laying down on cold concrete, her cheek resting on brisk and hard surface that was comforting in the way the the cool side of the pillow is, and she sat up to inspect around. As she eventually stood, she saw around her a suburb whose street, oddly pristine and wellkept with crisp freshly painted yellow lines, she was standing in the middle of, and the sky was an infinite black, her surroundings faded into shadow only a short distance away from her as if she was the center of a sourceless spotlight, and a dullness permeated everywhere. Her last dream was recent enough to make the connections. Going by the saying ‘if it ain’t broke’, she spun around as she did before, and sure enough, about three identical houses down, which every house seemed exactly the same, there was a single working streetlamp that beamed down a yellow light onto the street.
She approached, wary this time, but saw no fish tank as she did before. Looking around, turning completely in a circle, there was no fish that she expected, and she stood a bit defeated and confused. After a moment, she had an idea that dawned on her, and she looked up. As she did, sure enough, her eyes met the gaze of the entity from her last dream, the slightly yellow human eyes staring back into her, but this time the eyes were contained in a white and brown barn owl that seemed to produce its own faint yellow glow, perched on top of the streetlamp looking down on her, expressionless. She cleared her throat silently as she could and mustered her courage.
“A-are you from before?” she inquired in the most confident voice she could muster.
As the owl stared back, the beak began to twist and morph, the back edges began to curl up as the sound of whining and straining bone reached her ear; it was a sound undescribable, the rigid beak changing and twisting unnaturaly to form a new shape. As the sound that made her physically nauseated stopped, she was once again paralyzed, frozen to rigidity with fear, as the beak had coalesced itself into a smile that bore white human teeth. It replied in the same deep and menacing voice that struck at her nerves worse than the new one in the woods, and the sound of constricting and shifting bone came again as the beak moved like lips along with its speech in a completely unnerving way.
“Back so soon?” it chided, “Hmm… It seems this isn’t quite a dream, is it?” Its face and beak shifted into a coy and sarcastic pensive expression before it turned and gave her a smirk and side-eye that made her go cold, and it then closed its eyes and inhaled sharply, as if an answer came to it. “Someone else, as they say, triggered this haven’t they? Well, friend,” with that word her knees buckled slightly as she was giving everything not to collapse, “you’re a bit early.”
“Goodbye,” she compulsively but cordially replied.
With that, she regained her vision, and was shocked to find herself still standing, but she looked over to see the blonde lady that had touched the stone was standing mere inches away. Lola, confused, for the excessive time today, had to take in her surroundings, and she gave out a little gasp as she saw her hand on the stone. Had she slept-walk to it?
“Oh goddess,” she swore under her breath.