A Winter Dream

“We have to go back to the pink grass realm…and we have to take her with us,” Yari explained, “If we can find the object that binds her here, we can destroy it and take her back to her father’s realm. From there, you and I might be able to get her back to my home realm.

“Maybe your father and the other kings know a way to heal her. If she’s not bound anymore, she may begin to improve anyway, but any damage done should be able to be healed. Furthermore, she couldn’t get to your father’s dimension in the first place because her father had already bound her here. If he hadn’t, she would have easily been able to live with your dad there all these years.”

Lila’s face crumpled up with pain, “How could he do this to his own daughter? At least my dad did it because he loved me and my mom and couldn’t bear to see me pain or for her to live without me. It sounds like my mom’s dad did it to make his life easier with his mate.”

Yari frowned in frustration, “I don’t think it matters the circumstances. It’s wrong to bind someone away from their talents and abilities. I felt your hurt over the constant dimension jumping and missing Ransom so much…but even still…given time, you would have learned to manage it until you could be with him permanently.

“Don’t you think that if your parents had tried harder to find out why your mom and dad met in the first place…why she could be there at all…and solved that problem…you wouldn’t have had to choose? You could have all three been together and near your mate this whole time. Not only that, but I would have found you seven years before I did.”

Lila considered Yari’s words carefully before nodding, “I agree with you. I would have happily suffered even more pain if they had taken the time to help mom and make sure my parents could be together. What a waste.”

“Yes, indeed. Let us not forget this lesson when we birth offspring of our own, little flower. This kind of mistake cost everyone so much,” Yari stated wisely.

Lila stood up with determination, “Alright then. How do we find this object?”

Yari rose from the couch with her and tapped her finger on the side of her nose, “It’s probably something from the pink grass dimension. Is everything your mother and grandmother owned in this house?”

“Yes, I believe so,” Lila nodded, “and it has to be something that’s still around or mom wouldn’t still be bound, right?”

“That’s what I think, yes,” Yari concurred.

“Then we should start in the dining room. That’s where my grandmother and later my mom stored all the extra crap in the house,” Lila explained while leading Yari down the hall to the first door on the left.

Yari entered the room and took several deep breaths. Lila opened the various boxes and let her have a whiff. Nothing jumped out at her, and so Lila took her on a tour of the house. They stopped in every room with Yari sniffing about. After searching every room by Dana’s they came up empty.

Yari shared, “I didn’t smell anything in your mom’s room either, well…except her. Maybe let’s look outside?”

The snow was melted now, but it was still a bit chilly, so Lila grabbed a jacket from a hook near the front door and put on her boots. She looked Yari up and down and realized her leathers looked pretty warm, so she didn’t offer her a jacket.

They went out on the front porch and Lila looked everywhere while Yari sniffed around the house. While Lila was peering under the front porch, Yari moved around to the back of the house. She went through the gate into the backyard and caught a tiny scent of the pink dimension, and so she followed it. Soon she was calling for Lila to join her in the backyard.

Lila followed the sound of Yari’s voice and soon was standing at one of the corners of the house that was fenced into the back garden.

“Look,” Yari pointed near the foundation at the bottom corner brick, “that’s a cornerstone. It reeks of the pink dimension.

Both women crouched down near the stone to get a closer look. When they got nearer, it was obvious that there were strange symbols carved into it. Yari frowned at it.

“I don’t know what it says, but I can’t just smell it, I can feel the magic coming off of it,” she explained.

Lila reached out a hand and touched the stone, but pulled her hand away quickly, “It’s hot. It shouldn’t be, it’s still cold outside.”

Yari stared at it for a moment then said, “Go get me a knife. It doesn’t have to be sharp…any knife is fine.”

Lila entered the house from the sliding glass door at the back and rifled through the drawers to find a sturdy butter knife. She found what she was looking for and also grabbed a kitchen towel on her way back outside. She handed over the knife.

Yari took it from her and began chipping away at the mortar around the stone. It wasn’t hard to do. It appeared to have been there a long time and was already a bit crumbly. It only took a minute to remove the cracked chunks until the brick was loose. Once it was easy to wiggle a bit, Yari sat on her butt and leaned back then kicked the heal of her boot at the outside corner of the brick. It took three kicks to dislodge it, but it slid out of the house and landed a couple of feet away on the grass.

Lila wrapped the towel around the brick then stood up, explaining, “I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to handle it too much. We’ll talk to mom when she wakes up. Since we don’t know exactly what it will do to her, we shouldn’t destroy it while she’s sleeping. Who knows where that could send her.”

Yari nodded and they went back inside, placing the stone on the kitchen counter.

“Are you hungry?” Lila asked.

“A little,” Yari admitted.

Lila washed her hands and got to work cooking something for the three of them while they waited for Dana to wake up. She hoped it wouldn’t be long.