—Kallan—

It had been nice to talk to Hazu again. She was fun to be with and always had a way of making me smile. I wondered how she had been doing since we hadn't talked in a long time; in fact, the last time I ever really saw her was at the slumber party we had thrown for Scarlett. In all honesty, though, I enjoyed talking to her. It was one of those few times I could talk to someone and they would actually listen to me. It was hard growing up for me. With an older sister like Talia, who needed a lot more attention and care than I did, I was sort of forced to bottle my issues up inside to take care of her when she needed it.

Even at Eternal, I had gotten a reputation as 'the nice girl' on campus. Everyone seemed to come to me to make friends with to ask me if their lives would get any better. In that way, I used my power of foresight to become some sort of Fortune teller and therapist in one. Everybody came to me with their troubles and I helped them work through them. That was the way it was. I thought it was going to be the same with Hazu, but the odd thing was that she didn't really talk about what was going on. One day, it led to me talking about myself to try to get her to open up, but my attempts ended up becoming a very one-sided rant about all of the things that had been bothering me in my life.

I laid it all out. Even though I had some very good friends, it felt like I couldn't tell them my problems without them trying to justify why theirs were worse. As much as I loved to help people, it hurt when they wouldn't let me talk about the things that were bothering me and listen with as much respect as I had given them.

Even when I was growing up with Talia, it never seemed like she had time for me. She was always too busy training to try and win her father's approval and earn the family sword. Each day would end with her screaming in Russian and breaking something out of frustration. The few times when I actually did try to talk to her, she told me to go away or gave me a threatening glare and told me to go to hell. Even though our relationship had eventually gotten better, the scars were still there.

Once the word had been spread to the entire school that I was the Cleric, less people came for comfort and more just talked to me and asked me to tell their future like some sort of Fortune teller. That annoyed me to no end. Kids on campus would find me, insisting that they were my 'friends' and would ask me a small favor, that small favor being to tell them the answers on Friday's math test, or if so and so would ask them out to the dance. I had to tell them each time that my powers didn't work that way. I had no control over what I saw: it just happened. Sometimes there would be people that would just accept it, but more often than not kids would call me a liar and verbally harass me. It's not like I tried to take it to heart, but sometimes I couldn't help it.

And not only that, but the visions themselves confused and terrified me. Sometimes I would see visions of things that could happen and they could be easily avoided if I pushed someone out of the way at the right time or warned the teacher of a faulty wire in a certain area. Then there were the fixed visions that I couldn't change, like the time I saw Luc smack into one of the trees in the courtyard at full tilt and get a concussion. Sometimes they weren't always pleasant, either. I could see my mother being eaten alive by Shadow Creatures or one of my friends being fatally wounded. This left me to wonder if these events could be prevented or if they were fixed, giving me more stress than a usual teenager. Other kids were going through puberty and had to worry about stuff like acne and how badly they smelled. I had to worry about other people and the potential trouble that they would get themselves into.

Once I had let all of this off of my chest, I had felt so relieved to have told someone. After I had let it out, I wondered if I had overloaded Hazu with information. I looked over to her, scanning her face for any sort of discomfort. Instead of finding her upset, she had nodded her head in an understanding manner. She touched the grass on the courtyard, causing a small sprout to pop up from the ground. The sprout eventually became a group of beautiful white flowers. She plucked them from the ground and placed them in my hands.

I had looked at her curiously as I took them. "What are these for?" I asked her.

She just looked at me and smiled. "This flower is called Edelweiss. It stands for power in Hanakotoba, the language of flowers" She explained. "I-I figured you might need some in the days to come. Try not to let anything bring you down, o-okay? Because I'll be cheering for you."

I still had those flowers with me. I made them into a bookmark by pressing them together and adding adhesive so they don't fall apart. Since I was always reading, anytime I felt like I needed strength, I would just pull out the bookmark from whatever book I was reading. It was a great reminder that I was never alone, no matter how bad things looked. It was something that I always had on me. Even now, it was in my luggage. Just having it near me was empowering.
I checked the time on my phone. It was still set in Eastern time so I could check how long the flight had taken. Since we had left at about 11:00 and the clock now read 9:00, we had been traveling for ten hours. I looked back at Hazu. She had fallen asleep, yet Jian was wide awake right next to her.

There had been something between the two of them that made me curious. Any time that Hazu started to act unlike herself, Jian would always be the first person to take care of her. Whenever she came back, she would act as her normal self. Why was that? Did Hazu have some sort of condition that Jian couldn't cure? I remember Jian saying something about her having schizophrenia, but Hazu never complained about hearing things or seeing things that weren't there.
Not only that, but whenever Hazu's personality changed, she did things that I knew weren't like her. She talked more about herself and made a point to avoid me. She also talked about people behind their backs, especially when it came to anyone that seemed to show any sort of interest in Luc. It sounded more like Hazu rather had multiple personality disorder than schizophrenia. Surely, if anyone had to know about it, that person would be Jian.

"Hey, Jian," I started.

He looked up from whatever he was doing, probably listening to rock music while playing Angry Birds. "Yeah?" He replied.

"You're Hazu's cousin, so it's easy to say you have the closest relationship to her, right?"

He raised an eyebrow in suspicion. "Where exactly are you going with this, Kallan?"

I rested my arm on my fist. "Don't you notice how Hazu seems to take on everybody else's struggles, but never seems to share her own?" I asked, trying to make the question sound as casual as I could. After all, it would be a pain if Jian thought I was being nosy. "You wouldn't happen to know why that is, would you?"

Jian placed his hands behind his head. "Beats me. Ever since she was little, Omori-sama just loved to help people and never really wanted anything in return. One day she had fallen off her bike and got a huge gash on her knee. I had ran over to help her as fast as I could, and managed to trip and fall into the grass. Even though she was the one with the worse injury, she came over to ask me if I was okay." Jian shrugged. "I guess she's really just a selfless person."

I thought about that piece of information for a bit. I then gave Jian a serious look. "Well, if Hazu never shares her feelings with anyone, what's going to happen to her when she really needs help?" I tried to express my legitimate concern through my words, showing how much I actually cared for her as a person.

This question seemed to perplex Jian. He rubbed his chin, his eyebrows knitting together as if he knew what he wanted to say, but had to choose his words very carefully. "Well, if the problem is something so bad that she feels that she can't take care of it on her own, which I've only really seen happen about once or twice before, she'll tell one or two people she really trusts and try to deal with it without anyone else finding out."

I gave a nod of acknowledgement. "Does Hazu really not like people worrying about her?"

Jian nodded. "I guess so."

I gave a weak smile, folding my hands in my lap. "I wish she could learn to rely on the other people that care about her, though."

Jian gave me another curious look. "How do you mean?"

"Well," I started, "If Hazu would rely on us, she would have more support for whatever she was going through. And since I've been through this personally, I know the support of a couple people is tremendously better than the support of one."

Jian bit his lip. As he spoke, the tone of his voice became gravely serious. "Well, what if it was something that you weren't sure if people should know? What if it was something that would more than likely impact someone in a negative way?"

I felt a sense of unease rise within me. As much as I wanted to avoid feeling uneasy, the way he said it put me on edge, like he was implying something. "What are you talking about?"

Jian's eyes narrowed, signifying that he wasn't kidding around anymore. "Let's put it this way; what if you had an unchangeable vision that, I don't know, Talia was going to get in a car crash that would ultimately kill her. You wouldn't want to tell anybody about it, would you? Even if you told someone who wasn't Talia herself, they might end up telling her, and she might have nerve-wracking anxiety about the upcoming event. In extreme cases, she might even lock herself away in her room so she never goes outside again."

I nodded. "I guess I can see your point there, but  my visions are something else entirely. Hazu can't see the future. There's no way she could be hiding a secret so bad that it might endanger anyone around her."

Jian's face didn't reveal anything. "You know better than anyone that danger doesn't always come in an obvious package."

I felt a sense of guilt rise up in me. He was right. I had no right to say how things should be. I sighed and leaned back in my chair. I looked at the ceiling of the plane, wondering what Jian was hinting at. Hazu definitely had some sort of secret that he knew about. That much was obvious. I wondered what it could have been, but I didn't ask much more. I didn't want to seem nosy. Besides, it wasn't even his secret to tell me in the first place.

I tried to make myself as comfortable as I could in my seat. I felt a yawn rise up in my chest and I realized how tired I actually was. My eyelids started to get heavy as the power of sleep started to take me over. I eventually closed my eyes, enjoying the sensation of falling asleep. I then heard a voice chanting in the back of my head, in a language long lost to this world. Slowly, the material world around me ceased to exist.

***

I was viewing myself. I was fighting against a great black dragoness with an army of shadows around her. Kali. I was fighting against her with everything I had until I was swatted aside like a fly by her huge paws. Scarlett took my place and taught against her, the Prince's body covered in fire as she punched and slashed at her father's cousin.

Suddenly, Hazu came into focus. She was sending swathes of thorny vines towards the enemy, fighting from a relatively safe distance. Kali growled and reared her head, sending a spear of concentrated shadow magic her way. She was going to kill her. I jumped up and took the attack for Hazu, blood flying everywhere as the spear pierced my body. I fell lifelessly to the ground as I heard Hazu's screams.

THE PEARL OF SCIANA SHALL SAVE THE ROSE OF SHADOW.

***

I woke up with a start. My body was covered in cold sweat and I was breathing heavily. With a pair of shaking hands, I wrapped my arms around my body. I wanted to scream. How was this possible? I was going to die. 

Hey, guys! Sorry that the chapters have been super short lately. The next one is going to be extremely long, though so I hope you all look forward to it!

Signing Off, Kiera Savage