Free Ascending the Veil by Venessa Kimball

seated up right, her eyes moving from me to Xander, to Monica to Isabel. Poor Isabel is standing stiff as a board, hands by her side watching her once stagnate sister sitting before her awake. A crease in Corinna’s forehead deepens as she stares at Isabel’s face. Isabel is trying without success to hold it together. Tears are falling from her eyes and her body is trembling, but she does not make any sudden moves.
    Corinna releases my arm roughly, continuing to study Isabel. Her voice is like a source of light in the darkest of spaces when she realizes who she is. “Isabel?”

Chapter 7
    Nate
     
    I stalk from the gate, straight for the woods just beyond the open grove. The trees that line the sidewalk are a bright orange and yellow. An empty park bench is canopied by a crimson-leafed tree. I don’t know what makes me look at the bench. I mean, no one was sitting there. Just then shards of light slowly conjoin, producing a fractured form of a little boy sitting on the bench swinging his legs. I stop walking, stunned by what I am seeing. I blink my eyes. Maybe I’m imagining this. Nope, the boy is still there.
    I should be moving away from the child, but instead I step toward the boy. The image fractures and disappears just as Ezra comes up behind me.
    “Nate, did you see something?”
    I breathe in deeply through my nose. The smell of something metallic burns the back of my nostrils and throat. I try to swallow past the burn, look at Ezra, and nod slowly. “Yeah, I did.”
    Ezra cautiously puts his hands on my shoulders and turns me back toward the woods. Still astounded by the event, I stumble over my own feet and wrench my neck to look back at the now vacant bench. Ezra has to lead me along side of him. “We need to get out of sight, now.”
    I clear my throat to try and sooth it and a spasm rises in it. Ezra takes notice. “You keep clearing your throat. Are you alright?”
    Am I? What am I saying? Of course I am fine. I rub my nose with the sleeve of my shirt and keep walking. “Yeah, my throat is just dry.”
    Ezra says nothing, he just keeps my stride and stays close. He doesn’t have to say that he is worried, I can feel that he is. I scan the park one last time to make sure no one or no thing is watching before we enter the dense woods.
    Once in the woods, I feel Ezra fall behind and the space between us widen. I turn to see what is holding him up. He is standing with his arms crossed over his chest sizing me up. “What now? Why did you stop?”
    Ezra rubs his throat then points to me. “Your throat, it’s the atmosphere here. It is different from our world’s atmosphere. That is why you are clearing your throat.”
    I swallow hard and an ice, cold flash of fear trails through my limbs.
    Ezra walks toward me. “Our bodies, they are trying to assimilate, adapt to the change in the environment.”
    Perfect, we are going to die now because we can’t breathe the air here, wherever we are. And, why the hell is he using sign language.
    He stands next to me, preoccupied by his surroundings. “We aren’t going to die. We would have died hours ago if we couldn’t breathe the air here.” Ezra adds, “Unless our body begins to reject the assimilation.”
    Seriously? He is telling me this now when we are stuck here? “Great to know , Ezra.”
    Ezra continues to survey the terrain, “Levels of Titanium must be higher here, I can feel a little irritation in my lungs, but not much.”
    Ezra points at me. “Some are more sensitive to mild changes in the levels.”
    Ezra reaches out and touches a nearby leaf on a shrub. He plucks it and inspects it before tossing it to the ground. “The plant life appears to be similar to ours, so the levels aren’t deadly to living organisms.”
    Ignoring me now, Ezra walks deeper into the woods without me. “I wonder how much Helium is present in this atmosphere. That element silently suffocates living organisms you know. ”
    He is unbelievable! I stalk after him.