Past the Mountains, Among the Clouds

I had been unlucky. Yes. Just unlucky. I was in the wrong place. At the wrong time. A cleansing ritual. Quite common in these parts of the country, the purpose of such rituals is to drive away evil spirits and keep the mountains happy. That's just part of the exchange she had to do for being a goddess, even if she wasn't a true one. Still, it shouldn't have affected me. I was a mortal. I was to be unaffected. Yet, here I stood as the result of such an ordeal. 

A rare sight. Even to a goddess, I was folklore.

"I still can't comment on why it happened. But my story should have been quite easy to follow for you." She said.

Yes. Gods exist no more. A balance. The reality is nothing but the manifestation of the balance. If one sides weight more, it automatically adjusts the other. A fifty-fifty. A thing beyond the control of gods. Nature. It cancels out everything. If one half is too strong, make the other half stronger or, in this case, make the stronger half weaker. Decentralized. Distributed. A fragment. She was a fragment of Biera, the true Goddess of Winter. 

"There's one thing I don't understand." I remarked. 

"You may voice your doubts." She replied back.

"If nature is responsible for your current state, why the cleaning ritual? Wouldn't nature automatically balance it out?" 

It seemed stupid. It was stupid. Because nature was stupid.

"It lacks a will. We don't know how it might balance things out."

"Then again, why the ritual?"

"I am not erasing their existence. I'm just dispersing them."

Decentralized. Distributed. Dispersed. Just like her. They exist because of thought. They don't because of thought.

"Rumors.." She had said.

"They affect us all equally. If one half is forgotten, the other shall cease by itself. That is the law."

A law above gods. Saying demons don't exist weakens it, but it tips the balance in favor of gods. Thus, nature undoes the advantage. The demons were weak, but so had become the gods. 

"Do the spirits not know of this?"

"The evil ones? Yes, they do. We all do."

"Then why are they evil?"

"Nature-" she said.

"To them it's the engraved into their being. Their very own identity. Just like it's my identity to cleanse, or your to exist, think and conjure...."

"Conjur-?" I tried to ask. A sudden realization came up on her face. A quick look at my face and she stopped me. Her eyes. A command. I stopped.

"Needless to say, this entire exchange shall never be talked of again. You will complete your time here without ever speaking to me again." She commanded.

"You are a student here?!"

"What's so surprising about that?"

"A lot!"

"Well, I don't find it even a single bit. So, stay mum and keep your strength under check."

"Strength?"

Her eyes pointed towards the handle I had pulled out from the door. I hadn't given it much thought and had blamed the result on the dilapidated state of the building. The hall was dilapidated. The door wasn't. It wasn't a weak and ruined door. It was my sheer strength. I had ripped it off.

I gasped. 

"Told you. There are some errors in reconstruction." She said.

Her mannerism had shifted. She spoke words as if they would have been obvious to anyone. I must be stupid in her eyes. 

"You can go now. Don't poke your nose into matters which doesn't concern you. Know your place and you'd stay out of trouble like this." She said.

"But I didn't poke my nose into a matter which didn't concern me. I was just taking a stroll. And the strength you speak of, will I be like this forever?"

She looked at me one final time. Her gaze was cold. I could again feel the chilliness in the air. I didn't want to take anymore chances, so I swiftly made my way out of the hall. The sky was still dark. It was still the dead of the night. 

Weird. I thought to myself. I looked around. It was the back of the hall. Dense plumage of the mountains surrounded the trail to the front. I could hear the chirps. Needless to say, it wasn't the morning birds but the thousands of insects. It was their residence. 

The front. It was the academic block. An array of buildings. All ranging in heights, from the tallest being six floors to the single floor complexes, ran down the hill. A straight line. A wall of the castle.

My hostel was nearby. It would take me hardly a minute to reach back. As the lights illuminated my pathway to my hostel, I wondered. I wondered if she, too, was confused. A first experience for a god. A folklore for gods. I was one. I wondered if she also didn't know what would happen. After all, she, too, wasn't a veritable god.

I got to my room. I glanced over at my clock.

3:14 a.m.

With little thought, I slept. I had surely underestimated her paradigm of powers.

The sun arose behind the mountains. My second day began.

My first one? A wild dream, to say the least. My second? I was running late. My very first day of classes. I was late. I was to wake up at 7:45 a.m for my 8'o'clock class. That damn alarm clock. No. It is completely my fault. I am to be completely blamed for my predicament. See, the clock was no longer alive, if commodities such as alarms were living in the first place. Perhaps, there in the vast cosmos, lived a god of clocks. I must've committed heresy in its eyes if that were the case. 

"There are some errors in reconstruction.."

I should have been careful. Crushed. Springs and bolt sticking out of places. A wrongful existence. Such were my thoughts when I had first laid my eyes on what I believed used to be my alarm clock. One powerful pull. Handles were ripped. An alarm clock stood no chance in front of the mighty being, which I so affectionately called my fists. 

Not just me. My shenanigans had another adverse effect. My roommate. We had agreed on our mutual duties. I was to handle the morning routine, which was basically waking him up. He seemed to suffer from this deep sleep curse I have seen people talk about. They won't wake up to the rings of the alarm. Volume. Ring. Distance. They are powerless. As he'd say in his own words.

"Nah, I'd sleep."

So there we were. Running. Gasping for air. We couldn't stop. It was already 8:25 a.m. We were definitely not in our class. We were late, through and through. 

"The elevator!" we cried out. It was out of order. Six floors of torment awaited. My encounter with Biera must've killed me because this definitely felt like hell!

8:31 a.m. Half an hour since the class had started. We stepped into the class through the backdoor. I could feel the curious eyes peeking through the sitting crowd of students. The professor, as I would learn to call my instructors in the coming years, had his back to the crowd. He scribbled on the large chalkboard. Strange symbols. I could see them. I couldn't understand them. I had more pressing issues to worry about. Not getting caught was definitely on my top priority at that moment. 

Empty seats. My eyes scanned through the crowd of three hundred students. Everyone comes for the first class, or so I have heard. A row. Completely empty. I signaled my roommate who was still gasping for air. Before the professor could turn, we had occupied our seats. Goody two shoes. Mission complete. Or so had I thought.

Man makes mistakes in times of crisis. We were men. We had committed a blunder. A mistake so grave it would have costed generals a war. A dynasty to be deposed. 

A row. 

Completely empty.

Why would it be?

It was the first one. Our first blunder being the first row. Poetic.

I must've been blind to not realise the decrease in distance between the professor and us as we moved to the bench. However, our mistake didn't stop there.

It was not just the first one. It was different.

Students sat on long curved benches. These were individual seats. Foam and wood. Soft and hard. Comfortable and not so comfortable. Perhaps they were the seats for special attendees.

The professor turned.

Two students. Clearly, not your special attendees have spawned out of thin air. Intriguing indeed. They occupy the very first row. A row which you remembered being completely empty. It's amusing now. 

Stupid or prodigy. A question comes up in your mind. A test to find that answer.

Unbeknownst to the professor, I already knew my answer. Stupid, through and through. We were idiots. I was fine with myself but how come my roommate didn't realise!

"You." He said. His finger points to a certain student. A student in the first row. A strikingly familiar face. It seems I see this person every day. It seems the person is me!

"Do what I just said." A chalk points towards me. An offering for the quest. I, however, was a sacrifice in making.

It was hell.

I made my way to the altar. The chalkboard. I took the chalk from the professor. I could hear an axe be sharpened. I looked at the board. Greek. I didn't know we were supposed to learn this very specific language in our first year. 

"I don't know Greek very well." I commented, trying to play cool.

"Oh, don't worry! They are just symbols. It's simple old maths!"

MATHS?!

The axe was just at my neck. I could feel it. Yes. I was about to be executed. As I looked at the goliath of a numerical, which I confused as my Rosetta stone, I could just muster up one action.

Pray.

The bell rang. Its rings travelling through the entire lecture hall. A look of disappointment in the instructor's eyes. My executioner sighed. 

"As I told you, the classes on the first day would be of forty minutes only. We'd begin with the fifty minutes one from next class. I hope you'll have yourself be accommodated to such long sittings by then." He spoke in a soft tone.

My prayers had been heard. My execution had been called off!