Rage or dissapointment, either way, at least I'm not alone

I don’t like spectators. When people watch me, that means they have expectations of me. The precise kind of expectations that I despised ever since I was young. Being the son of a famous actor brings certain ideas to people’s minds, ideas of inherited talent that they hope that you have.

What used to be scenic panic, became a gut reaction, one that leads me to put on the mask and try to give the public what they want. If I play my cards right, I can escape the scenario, I only need to act as if everything is okay for long enough to do so.

More than once, the mask was not well put. That has not stopped them from trying to fix it in place and throw me into the stage again.

Eventually, I started disliking silence too. When things are silent, the only thing that bounces around in my head are my thoughts, and I don’t like to listen to those. When I have nothing to think about, I think about myself, about all the times I have failed to put on the mask correctly and made an ass of myself in front of all those people who had expectations of me.

Right now there’s only me, a pond, and the profound darkness that spreads everywhere around me. Unfortunately, that means that this place is completely silent, the darkness separating me from all the noise from the forest. But if I manage to concentrate in whatever bits of the enviroment there are, I may be able to pull my head out from those thoughts I really want to avoid now.

I fiddled with the green knife in my hand. Initially, I pulled it out to attack whatever came towards me from the dark, but as time passed, I surmised that I probably was alone. Neither Lyra nor the shadow cape guy appeared, no matter how many minutes passed.

So once again, I looked at my reflection in the pond.

The memory of me falling down the stairs that first day returned to my mind when I did. Just what I needed.

I was so mesmerized by my own image and the downward spiral it was sending me into that I failed to notice when something else approached. Something was wobbling in my direction, slowly, coming from the darkness.

The creature was indistinct, just like the tentacles from the veil. But unlike those, this one was smaller. The size of a big dog, and with a similar number of legs too. I could distinguish its general shape, but my eyes failed to register any actual detail from it.

The creature walked as if it was swimming. Its steps were erratic, but somehow, it was putting one leg in front of the other. When it reached the border of the pond, it kept walking just the same, as if it hadn’t noticed that now it was knee deep in the water. I moved aside to let it pass, unsure if I should do anything with it. I had the knife in my hand, but somehow, the creature seemed to be ignoring me.

The creature crossed the pond, and with the same wobbling steps, it reached the other side of the barrier and disappeared in the darkness outside.

I was alone again. I breathed a sigh of relief, and after making sure that it was not returning, I sat down. Once again, looking at my reflection in the pond.

I tried counting the seconds, but I gave up after ten minutes. Fortunately, the darkness seemed to be starting to recede. It was still covering everything, but the space around the pond was now bigger. If it moved back enough, maybe I would see the forest again.

I started counting the seconds again, aloud, touching the surface of the water with the tip of the knife each second that I counted. My distorted image looked back at me, until suddenly, something appeared in the top of my head in the reflection.

“What the fuck are you doing.”

I somehow managed to scramble myself back on my feet without falling into the pond as I literally jumped from my spot from the surprise. when I did, I turned around and pointed the knife to whatever had appeared, before I noticed that it was Lyra.

Her profoundly unsurprised expression made me feel a slight bit of shame, but it soon gave way to a thought that had escaped my head until then.

“So you could always speak English?" I asked, hesitantly.

Her frown deepened even more.

“I’ll take this to mean the thief did not come here. Good to know.” She said, ignoring my question completely.

Unfortunately for her, I was not going to let it slide.

“No, you can’t ignore me now. I have been trying to speak with you for weeks and you have been acting as if you could not understand me at all. I felt like a madman trying to communicate with you. Why didn’t you say anything before?”

I could swear I saw a vein popping in her forehead, before she turned around, and saw the darkness that still surrounded us. She had nowhere to go. I got closer to her.

“Stop ignoring me.” I said, more and more irritated.

She turned around, looking as if she wanted to kill me with her glare. She could not.

“So, got anything else to say?” I growled, more than said.

We stood still, looking at each other, until her irritation seemed to disappear, as once again, she looked at me with an empty face. She tilted her head a little, as if she didn’t understand me, and then walked away towards the edge of the pond.

I grabbed her from her wrist before she could do so. Soon enough, I felt the cold metal of her spear pressing my neck.

“Don’t you dare touch me.” She snapped at me, pressing the spear against my neck, giving a step forward for every step back that I gave. “Yes, I can speak your language. Yes, I have been ignoring you all this time. No, I don’t owe you any explanation about anything, so unless you got anything actually worth saying in that empty void you call head, you’ll leave me alone. Am I clear enough?”

She stopped before I stepped into the darkness, grabbing me and throwing me into the ground, away from it.

Once again, she walked to the border of the pond, ignoring me. I looked at her in shock, but soon enough realized that I had no options here. Until the darkness receded, I had no option but to stay with her in this place.

She was looking at her reflection in the water. Silently, intensely. Eventually, I sat down far away from her, on the opposite edge of the pond. From there, I could see her grimacing, boiling with a rage that I hoped was not directed towards me. She was now looking at her reflection as if she wanted to kill it with her glare.

Eventually, she was the one who started the conversation.

“Nobody came to this place before me, right?” She asked, with the most neutral voice she managed to speak with. She was seething.

“No.” I said, trying to be concise. Unless that strange creature from before counted as someone, which it probably did not.

“You are not lying to me, are you?” She said, now looking intensely into my eyes.

I did my best to look confident, hoping to not anger the girl with the spear once again. In my back, I had my hand on the knife, hoping that I would not need to use it.

“No, of course not.” I said, keeping eye contact with her.

After a moment. She nodded, and looked down into the water again.

“Don’t you ever talk to anyone outside the village. Understood?” She said, finally starting to relax.

Maybe, I’ll come out of this one alive after all.

“Understood” I said. If I agree with her now, everything should be fine, right?

“I hope you do. It is for your own safety, after all.” She concluded.

Eventually, I started counting the seconds in my head again, while looking at my reflection in the pond. I still felt a trace of rage inside me, for all the time she had been ignoring me while being perfectly capable of understanding me. I wanted answers, but I knew better than to press her any more.

The pond was no longer silent, but very nearly so. The lack of sounds was so notorious that now I could hear the sound of her breathing, all the way across the pond. It wasn’t much, but at least I wasn’t alone anymore. As long as it was not truly silent, I had something to concentrate into instead of my own thoughts.

After what must have been another couple of hours, the darkness receded, and the forest returned. When it did, she silently rose up, and started walking towards it. She looked back at me, as if she wanted to say something, but instead made a sign with her head as if instructing me to follow her.

In a matter of minutes, we finally returned to the village. Turns out the place we were in was the pond they get their drinkable water from.

At the very least, now I know where to find water from. The escape plan is going smoothly.