Chapter Forty-Two: Treehouses in Switzerland

"We'll be touching down in ten minutes...It's going to be rough down there."

Oz's voice rouses me awake and I look out of the window and saw a still night around us, stars and the moon painted on the dead black air but below was a blanket of tinted white dust and cloud. I knew I was going to freeze my ass off out there.

X stood from his spot and stops in front of me. I figured he wanted me to follow him. I get out of the chair and silently followed him, with Lady one step behind me, to a random location in this giant-ass ship that I would presume where they held the equipment. Sure enough, it looked like a locker room and X rummages through one of the steel contraptions lining the walls and holds out thick winter clothing towards me. I take them from him without a word.

I slip into the all black gear, realising that it was similar to the stuff that I see everyone wore when they were outside of that hideout of theirs. Namely X...now that I think about it, I've never seen him in normal clothes. Lady sniffs at the gear as I fumble with it. She felt it strange for me to wear something unfamiliar, I explained that I don't have fur like her, so I had to wear pretend fur.

It hit me kinda hard as I slip on the jacket, zipping it up to my chin, that I had basically sold my soul to this group...and we are literally hovering over the top of my extracted price. I look up at X who in turn met my eyes. I am so scared that on the outside, I was calm, like I had mentally detached from reality.

I haven't been here for two...maybe three years and this time...I'm letting strangers into my mother's home. No one really knew this place existed. And now I'm leading the 'enemy' as Cody would call them, to one of our doorsteps. He'll kill me when he finds out.

Let him kill me. Whatever it takes.

X leads me to the closed ramp where I was first on this thing where both Seth and Fenir were waiting.

"Really look like one of us now, eh Kae?" Seth grins as we near him.

He was right, we were all matching in the black ops gear that looked like I belonged in a shoddy first-person shooter video game.

But I wasn't given a gun.

I felt the airship land on the snow and Oz's voice comes over some sort of PA system, "Okie dokie kids...plus grizzly old man, I'm gonna open up the hatch. Good news is that the radars aren't picking up any movement outside and we are at the tail end of that storm, so we won't get the visibility issues. But there are pretty strong winds and you'll run the risk of hypothermia if you don't find cover within...let's say an hour or two, with our current gear. I'm gonna remain in here and scout the area. I'll relay any information from either Siem or any findings I make. I'll join you guys at whatever location you're in, in about an hour. It's all up to you, Kae." Lucky bastard is all snug up there.

The thick metal door folds out with mechanical noises, making Lady feel on edge as the cool air from outside suddenly hits us.

'Cold...and silent.'

I look at her for a second before moving out onto the ramp into the outside. Even though it's so fucking cold, my hair was standing on end, the air felt of 'home'. It wasn't oppressing or dead. It wasn't torturing or festered. It was clean, crisp and smelt of snow and forest. Outside, the moon illuminated the snow underfoot that crunched under my boots. We landed on a ridge of a valley that was just south of Laax. Looking down towards the dead silent buildings contrasting black in shadow to the snow, I knew it was long abandoned.

I felt like I was transported back in time to the two or three years ago. Nothing had changed. I felt my feet carrying me away for the ridge towards a forest. I was almost in a trance, remembering that time from before. The house was in the edge of a farm closer to Sagogn and I knew it would have been smarter to land on the property, but I wanted to find the old treehouse that mum and our grandparents secretly built on the edge on this side of the forest. I explored this forest every year we came here. Cody and I used to play hide and seek or pretending to be monsters in the woods...I look down at the claw...how close to that I've become...

"Kae," Seth calls for my attention. I stop and turn around, realising that Oz and his ship was pulling up into the sky, leaving us abandoned here. Fenir was pulling up the rear, looking around as if he was expecting something to jump out at us, any second now. "Before you go charging off, put this on." Seth came towards me with a tiny headset with a small microphone.

I place it on, earning a confused look from Lady.

'I can talk to them without being near them.' I try to explain.

'As Dreamer does with Lady?'

'Sort of. I still need to talk with my voice.'

'Speech is confusing and harsh. Voices lie. Say something then does another. Cannot listen. Forgets.'

I can't really disagree with what she's getting at.

'Not a lot of people can do what we can.' Other than my sister...and to some extent X, I haven't met anyone who can read thoughts like a newspaper.

Lady snorts and instead looks around. I realise that she isn't fascinated with the snow as she was with the made up rainforests.

"Seen and felt white rain before. Not as pretty...' She sent a strange image of darkness and the same squelching noise from snow underfoot. But it was accompanied with wire-cut tension and a feeling of being haunted by shadows that I was no longer shivering because of the freezing cold that's numbing my nose.

"It doesn't look like any Storms have hit here." Seth's voice again pierces the quiet air.

I don't stop this time while replying, "No. But everyone would have abandoned most of the municipalities around here for Zurich when the Disaster came about. It probably got even worse when they got a Tower." Fucking Towers and their fences. "...But we saw miasmic beasts roaming the countryside every now and again when we were here last time. And I can't say if any Nests have popped up in the area..." I look over at X who was watching the night sky.

We came to the first line of the tall dark evergreen trees that acted like a barrier to the forest. I couldn't help wanting to rush into it quicker. A few meters in, I knew exactly what I was looking for. In the tree tops was a series of platforms, ropes and rotten wooden bridges that would have been impossible to find unless you knew exactly what you were looking for. I followed the 'sky roads' as Mum called them and came across the main treehouse.

"This looks awesome!" Seth breathes.

"It was our treehouse."

"Tree mansion more fucking like it!"

The treehouse was set over a number of levels in about ten different trees together with a number of platforms, ladders and stairs set amongst them. My brother and I would explore the five different rooms and the sky roads for weeks if we were left to our own devices. A main walkway was hidden behind the outragous project of my grandfather had worked on for years. It was a simple ladder that came down if I pulled on a rope. I'm hoping that it hasn't snapped or rotted as I reach for it. Sure enough, even with a number of the ladder steps broken, it still falls to the groups with a solid thud.

I climb the ladder, hoping that it won't break under my weight.

"I'm going to scout ahead." Fenir mutters, walking passed below me.

"The house isn't too far from here."

"I'm not going towards your house," he answers back briskly.

I pause in my ascent as I watch him head out deeper into the forest. He looked as though he was following one of the rope roads that headed towards a tiny outpost some forty meters away.

"I think he's impressed," Seth states below me.

I get to the top, onto a platform in front of an open, half rotten door, "My grandfather was obsessed with making things." I call back down.

"I'll say. I'm going to look around down here, in case of anything decides to pop up."

I look down and see Lady a little distressed, 'Can't follow...'

'Sorry Lady...I'll be down in a minute.'

'...Will wait. Lady knows where Dreamer is. Is better to know. Will watch. Lady will tell Dreamer if bad things come.'

'Thank you, Lady.'

With that I realise that X had followed me up here. I walk towards the open door, careful of the creaking wood beneath my feet, expecting to fall through at any moment with the creaking some of them gave off. "This was a secret hideout that my grandparents extended every year we came here. It started off with just this room but then...it became this monstrosity."

Looking inside the room, it was just as we'd left it. A small fort made from blankets that were now eaten away. Two hammocks were once hanging from the corners of the room but had fallen from their hooks in the last decade and now lying on the ground in a heap. I head over to the blanket fort, kneeling down to see if the bear I accidently left behind was still there.

Sure enough, the mottled bear was sitting down next to the drawing I didn't finish when we were told to get moving since we were going back to America since Markus was going to be born. I reach for the bear and pull it close to me, sitting down to get more comfortable. "We were in a rush and I forgot him. It was the last time I saw my grandparents as well. This was what they gave me when they first met me. They actually went all the way to Ireland and my Grandfather hated flying."

X pulls out the picture. It was a crude drawing of...something in red and yellow crayons. "You were worth it for him, Kae."

"I forgot that any of this was here." The bear felt so fragile in my hands, some of the fur fell away like dust where I had grabbed him. "I guess nothing really matters when the world literally ends."

He puts the picture down. "You're chasing something that matters to you right now, even when the world 'ended' ten years ago." He takes the teddy bear from my hands, using his thumb to push some of the blue and cream fur out of its black bead eyes. "I just think that...what you valued shifted when the world changed. You had to cast aside what...you could materialistically value..." he reaches to touch my face with a free hand, "You had to cast aside your child self a lot sooner than most would. It's something you sacrificed so that your younger siblings could feel safe."

I couldn't stop myself from putting a hand over his, "What about you?"

"Me?" He frowns a little, not really sure about my question. "I was never given the choice whether to cast aside the Old World self...I do not think it ever existed."

That seems so sad.

"It is not something I can grieve over if it never existed. I am here, now. I can...protect the 'you' now...with the 'me' that exists now." He tilts his head again, listening to whatever ghosts he can hear. "Before does not matter. What I value is you, Kae." His was dead serious. I don't think he even had a joking bone in his body. "Past, present, future. The Kae you are and will be. They are what I can value. I can make that choice to treasure you." I feel myself caught in a trance as I reach up to his face, my eyes unable to look away from his face...his mouth...

I feel myself leaning forward, my eyes close on reflex as my lips come against his. They were soft and strangely warm despite the freezing cold around us. At first I felt him tense at the contact but he soon relaxes, responding in kind. The silence around us made me forget for just a second that anything else existed. That there was nothing else that I wanted more.