Asleep *FINISHED!/COMPLETE*

*Chapter 19

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The next morning, I heard my name being called over and over again. For some reason, whoever was calling my name sounded as if they were underwater, and I wondered briefly how someone could manage to yell that loudly if they were, in fact, under water.

Then I was being shaken… I think. I could feel my head moving up and down, but it felt like I was encased in jello, the jostling slow and heavy.

“ELLIANA! WAKE UP! ELLIE! Please, baby,” the voice whispered, then yelled, “WAKE UP!”

Jase? What was he saying? Why is he screaming for someone to wake up?

“KAI!! I NEED HELP!”

Jase needed help? Why? What was wrong?

I wasn’t sure where he was or what was going on, but I had to get to him. Why couldn’t I get to him? My mind was fuzzy, but I was grasping at something real. I was missing something…

I tried to focus on my feet and making them move, but they felt so… so… heavy. Hands? Same. Fingers, maybe? Same. What was going on?

“ELLIE! ELLIANA!” Jase shouted.

More jello shaking.

Jase… I fought harder to get to him and felt my mind rising closer to the surface of whatever I was missing. When I felt like I might be able to reach him though, my eyelids felt heavier than every other part of my body combined and I almost let myself slip back into darkness before I heard heavy footsteps pounding beside my head.

“KAI, HELP HER!” Jase shouted at his brother, his emotions an absolute raw torrent that slammed into my subconscious. He was so afraid. I swear I could feel his heart aching inside my chest as if it were one with my own. His rapid heart rate felt like thunder in my bones, and I worried that it might actually explode into a million fragments if someone didn’t help him soon. At least some part of me was working the way it always had, feeling and feeding off of the emotions of those around me.

“Jase I’m not a healer,” Kai’s voice sounded regretful, worried.

“IT’S YOUR BRIGHT, KAI! USE IT! WAKE HER UP!” Jase pleaded with his brother. “SHE'S BARELY BREATHING!"

I could feel that Jase was on the verge of losing full control of his emotions, and a vision of him tearing a path of mass destruction played out vividly in my mind. I sucked in a sharp breath, but still did not awake.

“Ellie?? Ellie baby is that you?? Elliana! Please don’t do this to me, El.”

I still couldn’t grasp fully what he was saying, let alone what he meant… I was swimming in something thick and dark that almost seemed to hold me, pull me down harder the more I fought.

“Kai she’s not breathing…” A massive wave of panic welled up within me, fed to my soul from Jase. “KAI!” Jase bellowed.

HELP HER, DAMNIT! DO SOMETHING!”

Help… her…. Help… me? He means me. Something was wrong.

My mind was grasping at this new information, and I found my way closer to the light, closer to helping him.

“My bright doesn’t work like that,” Kai sounded deeply pained and I could feel his worry for his brother. “It’s a low level bright and it really only works on my own wounds to aid my warriors illumine… you know that, Jase.”

The steady rise and fall of my chest slowed, and oxygen suddenly became harder to find. I could almost feel my life force slipping away, as if I had one foot in, and one foot out of this world…

I could vaguely feel the distant turmoil of Jase as he screamed something I couldn’t quite decipher, but I was at peace.

If I tried to put into words exactly what transpired, I’d be doing it an injustice, as the next moments that followed were not to be known or fully understood on this side of Heaven… but I just had this peaceful knowing that I had a choice. A choice to live? Or a choice to enter into peace?

Here’s the thing, though. When you are fully in the realm of the living, death seems scary, undesirable. But when you are actually in the thrones of death, it feels… peaceful. Calm. Free of all the worry and heartache.. free from the turmoil.

Death is actually easy, it’s living that’s hard.

And I had to choose.

Choose to let the peaceful embrace of what comes next envelope me in a cocoon of bliss? Or choose to keep fighting, keep going through all the hard for the sake of the ones who needed me the most.

I thought of Callen and what would become of him if I let myself slip away… and somehow I just knew that he would figure it out somehow. That his soul truly was good and that forces beyond our imagination would see to it that he would eventually realize his true nature and choose light over darkness. I thought of Zander, Kai, Maven… I somehow knew they were built for a greater purpose beyond me and that they would be ok.

But when I thought of Jase… I had the briefest vision of the dark path that my loss would propel him down. And it was then I knew… I had to live. I had to live for him. I didn’t know or understand all the reasons why, but in that moment, I didn’t have to. I just knew, that if I let go? The kind hearted, selfless man I knew would… well, he would die along with me. In more ways than one. And the cost of his soul was enough to make me fight. Fight to come back to the surface, fight for life. I chose the hard. Because it was a battle worth fighting.

I suddenly drew in a deep breath, slowly realizing Jase’s crumpled form was splayed over my body, his sobs resounding deep within his chest as he held my lifeless form.

“Shhh…” I whispered softly, hoarsely. “Its going to be ok,” I said, as I weakly stroked the back of his head with my previously limp hand.

“Ellie?” He whispered as he looked up at me, cradling my heavy head under the crook of his arm, his eyes surveying me in disbelief. “Ellie? Is that really you? Are you… alive? Or is my desperation… my grief,” he choked out, “playing tricks on me?” He let out one more painful sob that he had been trying to hold back, at the end of his last question.

“Shhh… yes… it’s me, baby. Everything is going to be ok.” I don’t know why I called him baby. It made no sense in the real world, but nothing much of anything made sense these days, and somehow I knew that was what he needed. To hear my affection for him, however irrational and sudden it may have been.