Page 13 of Found in Obscurity

Her hands were still held out toward him, palms open and waiting for his. He looked around himself one last time, noticing people going through their own rituals with various results.

He saw some cradling animals in their arms, tears streaming down their faces as they embraced the other half of their soul for the first time.

He saw others, tears present as well, but for different reasons. Their familiar wasn’t there yet. It wasn’t their time yet. They’d go another year alone.

And then Lorin.

Hesitant still. Persisting. Refusing.

“Lorin,” his grandmother called again. “Time is running out.”

She shook her hands slightly in invitation and he knew he had no way out. Shaking fingers barely cooperating, he pulled his gloves off and stuffed them into his coat pocket before placing his palms on top of hers.

He knew his hands were cold and clammy, soaking up the warmth from hers as she gripped him tight.

“Close your eyes,” she said, and he followed her instruction instantly, finding it easier to hide behind his lids than to keep watching what was happening around him. “Seek for what you need.”

He needed a way out.

“What you truly need,” she said, as if reading his mind. As if she could read his soul. “Allow yourself to look at all the paths in the crossroads you’re standing at. Some lead you to where you think you want to be. Others will lead to where you need to be.”

He found himself looking around at the very core of who he was, the crossroads she was talking about clear as day in front of him. He was surrounded by a forest. Green and vibrant andalive, it whispered and rustled from all sides, pressing down on him. There was no sky, only paths—so many it made his vision waver and his resolve weaken.

How was he supposed to choose? To know which one to walk along?

He was paralyzed by indecision.

He whipped his head around, watching as each road stretched into the unknown, fog clouding the destinations.

He took a tentative step to the right, following the closest one to him. It appeared the shortest. The safest.

“Seek acceptance, Lorin.” He heard his grandmother’s voice echo inside his head. “Seek resolution of your conflicts and inner peace.”

He shook his head stubbornly and continued along the path he had chosen before he felt a coldness slither through him, like icy tentacles. It made him feel numb. Detached. It was what he had wanted all along—safety in numbness—but now it scared him.

Something inside of him was screaming out.

He rushed back as fast as he could, collapsing on his knees and trying to breathe. If not there, then where was he supposed to go? He looked helplessly between the roads untried.

They all looked the same. Empty and dark. Unfamiliar and unwelcoming.

And then a flicker of something bright at the corner of his vision.

A butterfly flap of movement down the road just behind him. At the end of it. Something amber and warm and soothing.

He felt a tug inside his stomach. A pull like someone had a hook in him. He got back to his feet and walked that way, following the feeling.

The voice inside his head was screaming at him not to do it. That it meant going against everything he thought he wanted. That he’d be trapped. Bonded.

But the feeling in his chest quieted everything else. Something soft and teasing. Mischievous as it called him forward. Familiar in a way nothing else had ever felt.

He walked faster, and the movement at the end of the road got clearer, the fog dissipating as the amber glow burned like sunlight. There was something waiting for him there. Something rushing to meet him halfway. Something that felt so much like a part of him he had no idea how he’d spent nearly three decades disconnected from it.

He broke into a sprint.

The road got narrower.

The thing got closer, taking shape. Something small and graceful. Fluid strokes of movement from an artist’s pen.