9.95 – An inspiration

Kathrine’s POV

Ashlynn Credant is such an inspiration. She’s incredible!

Cloverfield is a really silent town. It doesn’t do much. When all those crimes happened in Ridgevalley and Stonebridge and the surrounding towns, Cloverfield didn’t do much. It kind of sat there and took the changes smoothly.

No not smoothly, Ashlynn said it best. Cloverfield took the hits lying down.

And then, in a matter of weeks, Ashe singlehandedly pushed the town into a much more active role. She’s constantly protesting against the whole discrimination affair.

She does so much. She’s fighting against her own mother, who works for the Hans and siding with her father, who works for the police who also don’t support the Hans.

On top of fighting that battle, she’s climbed up to student body president at school and works to organize rallies to get the town aware of the injustice. She also works for the school paper (with me!). That’s actually where we met Jason.

He’s the president of the journalism club and Ashlynn dragged him down a long conversation about the political state of this entire continent. He was as enthusiastic about it as she was! Had me feeling a bit like a third wheel at times.

Actually most of the time. They’ve found common interests in just about everything.

Apparently he’s a Green, like us, but both his parents are Yellows and they were stuck in Ridgevalley because of the barriers. He hasn’t heard from them in a long while, but he’s holding out hope that things have just gotten a little tight and that they’re fine.

Meanwhile, we spend our days writing articles about it and revving people up. Just working at the paper and helping with rallies is a lot for me to handle, but Ashlynn even writes articles for the town newspaper. She’s even tried to get her stuff accepted by the Ridgevalley papers, but they aren’t receptive at all.

It’s all such a mess, but Ashlynn gives me hope you know? She doesn’t just do this, she has a blog too, to make sure the entire world hears her voice.  Do you feel that’s a lot yet? Cause that’s just the tip of the iceberg. She also has to do normal things like go to school, study and spend time with her best friend (me by the way, it’s easy to forget). On top of all that, she’s trying to resolve a mystery that got dumped on her by the guy she shares her fancy power with. She’s working hard to solve this curse problem.

She’s working…so…hard. She’s so busy being Cloverfield’s shining example. Being an inspiration to everyone.

I just want to go back to before all of this mess happened.

Before she met that guy. Before there was that explosion.

But I have to write an article now.

***

Crystal’s POV

I cut up my vegetables, lost in my thoughts as time ticked by slowly. Phillip came over to place a gentle kiss on my shoulder.

“What are you thinking about?”

“Candice.”

He hummed as he opened the fridge to get himself some water.

I worry for her. Phillip and I kicked her out a few months back, when the discord between her and Ashlynn was starting to get to be too much. Ashlynn was going to leave us and go live with Sebastien. As much as I like the man, he was going to take her to Ridgevalley. The town that was suffering the most from everything.

Kicking Candice out was the only way to keep everyone safe and close.

But I worry, she’s often calling me to tell me of her difficulties with living on her own. Her difficulties at work as well, but she tells me she’s still working on her project. The one that’s supposed to help her get a promotion. It’s slow working though.

“Do you think we’re handling this well?” I asked him.

“I think we should’ve sent Candice out a long time ago.” He admitted.

“She needed our help!” I exclaimed.

“Yes, then, but she stopped needing it a while ago. At this point she was just profiting of us. “He said. “And of Ashe.”

“I don’t think so. This is our daughter and that’s her daughter. We did what any parent should and she did what any child should.” I affirmed. Yes Candice never did pay any kind of rent, and would have breakdowns over the idea of doing anything for this house at all…we’re her parents and this is our house. It’s up to us to take care of it. She was a guest, a free guest, my child, it’s her job to use us.

“Okay.” He said, giving me a kiss on the cheek.

With a sigh I wrapped the diner up for later and wondered whether Ashlynn had woken from her nap.

She wasn’t having trouble sleeping anymore, but she spent most of her nights writing and doing research, so it didn’t make much difference to before.

“Dot, no barking!” I warned as our two pets started to play.

All of Ashlynn’s research into curses and the thing that plagued her and Nikolas led to us eventually adopting the green creature.  The cat, Lock, wasn’t much of a threat anyway. It isn’t clear why Lock is still alive – since the cat is supposed to be just a physical manifestation of the curse. Ashe assumes it’s because the curse itself is still active and I agree.

There’s been no harm in letting Dot and Lock play together for now.

The door to my granddaughter’s room flew open suddenly, with Ashe grinning and jumping.

“I did it!” She exclaimed. “Grandma, I’ve finally managed it!”

Sounds like nap time was extremely productive.

***

During nap time…

Ashlynn’s POV

I checked my watch, feeling the world ground itself with the concept of time, and drifted towards the ledge.

Nikolas was on the other side, knocked out per usual. I’ve never seen him awake in this place, and he says that if he ever was, he doesn’t remember it.

I started to set my area up, building myself a cage as I felt the place rumble. The fog was already moving. I wasn’t scared this time.

I mean, after a year of purposefully taking naps to come here, I’ve gotten used to the way everything functions.  Turns out I don’t need to worry about Nikolas at all. The fog won’t even bother with him. It’s me it’s after, most likely because I’m awake.

I still don’t know what this place is exactly, but I think the fact that it’s related to astral is a pretty good guess.  I come here mostly because I’m positive this fog is exactly the same as the curse. There’s an important connection to be made.

Ah the curse…I think we can officially say Nikolas has dumped this mystery on me. Oh we talk about it from time to time. He’s read all the books I have on the subject and we’ve brainstormed, but ever since I showed him the fancy cage I could make in astral to keep the curse locked up, he’s stepped away from it. Something about believing in me and my clearly superior abilities in astral.

It’s not false, I do have a lot more ease, but it feels like the subject is on an out of sight, out of mind basis for him. It’s not a constant problem pestering him anymore so he can just dump it on me without any worry.

Well whatever, I’m invested in getting rid of the huge leech that has me on my toes every time I want to astral. And to do that, I come to this place to do tests!

We’d already established that the fog converts our souls into more fog. That’s kind of how the curse works, but we managed to heal each other so I’m assuming the process can be reversed. I also tempted to go further with the idea that we could convert fog into the white lines we can make in astral.

I’ve gotten burned a few times. It’s a really complicated thing to do – I haven’t actually managed it yet. I need to have this really deep understanding of the entire concept. Whenever I get close, I can see the section of fog I have start to convert, but I’ve yet to fully convert it.

I keep trying to visualize it as the fog being a virus. Everything it touches gets infected and converted.  For that, whatever composes the white fog would also need to be a virus, so it could do the same. But that…that seems like twisting it.

There actually seems to be a pull done by the fog. Almost like…magnets. No, it’s as if the fog is a greater whole, and all it’s doing is incorporating foreign elements into its…cell? Which would mean that it’s really a conversion, everything it converts is still there just made to look like fog.

As I felt the concepts unfold in my brain, I saw my section of fog slowly convert till it was fully white lines.

I grinned.

I’ve done it!

I’ve actually done it!

***

I cautiously took another piece of the fog to convert it. It didn’t work as well in reality then it did in that dreamscape, but the point was that it was working. An extremely slow process, but the curse was losing in size!

I’d spent the last few hours working on this – several hours during which I’d attempted to contact Nikolas. If only so he could come and help me.

The first few astral knocks I did that got left unanswered didn’t surprise me. Niko’s found a way to block me out, stick me on an answering machine practically. It’s not even blocking, I’m pretty sure it’s just muting whenever he wants to do his own thing undisturbed.

I don’t really get it to be honest. It’s not like I’m intruding on his privacy. Actually by muting he’s only preventing me from contacting him, something I tend to keep for important things. Which was the case today.

Or so I thought, because it lasted several hours, and he was usually muted just for an hour or so.

I let out a breath and brought my aching arms down. I think it’s time for a break, this is really energy consuming.

I settled down to sketch a bit, and I was only a few seconds in when I felt a mental knock.

Oh there he is.

“Hey Niko.” I said. “The curse is in its cage you can pop on over.”

I put down my pencil, mentally prepping myself to just concentrate on showing him what I’d uncovered today – and not on how difficult it is to contact him. Maybe he can take this as a sort of lesson. You’re missing out on all this great stuff!

“Hey Ashe.” Nikolas said with some shame.“I kind of need help. I got…kidnapped.”