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Her hair flowed around her like a laurel as she stepped into the void and landed on the platform. Scott looked at her cautiously, following her with several paces between them.
“Lizzie, what is this?”
“It’s a surprise.” She walked over to the edge, trusting him completely to follow the rules of the game and not engage in combat first, unlike some other folks.
Scott exhaled, he’d been set up plenty of times before. “No, that’s the void.”
The words hung in the still air like the sound of styrofoam. Both sat with gritted teeth until Lizzie placed an ender pearl on the ground. Scott rolled his eyes and approached it, keeping his feet planted steady on the porous ground. She wildly swung her axe and he ducked, rolling away. She looked at him annoyed as he assessed the tear on his sleeve, reddened with blood.
“Lizzie!? Why?”
She swung again, but he parried with his sword, damaging the diamond of both weapons. Lizzie couldn’t even look at him in the eyes. She had no idea why. She was not allied with him. She had no allies. She was on her own like she always was. She didn’t look him in the eyes… Just over his shoulder into something entirely different’s eyes.
Scott hit the ground the moment he heard the sound. He covered his ears, trying to not hear the Enderman’s or Lizzie’s screams. She struggled to breathe, the Enderman’s hands around her neck until they weren’t and she was quickly falling. She hadn’t been that far off the ground when she was picked up, she knew the fate she had. The same fate she witnessed Martyn fall to. Silent suffocation with no way out. The ender pearl in her hand was no use. Scott staring over the edge was no use. Crying was no use, but here she was, crying as all the air left her lungs.
She expected to just be dead. She didn’t expect to keep floating in the void that only shifted slightly. She felt the air fill her back up as if completing CPR, except she was awake and aware the whole time.
“What is this?” She thrashed and squirmed as the semi-familiar face of the Secret Keeper appeared in front of her.
She could almost hear the smile on the featureless face. “It’s our little secret. You are an oddity, flightless like fish.”
“Well, that’s just rude. I don’t go around calling people fish!”
“It is what you are, right?”
She stared into the face, her eyes flashing purple. She curled in on herself, memories rushing over her like a river… like a wave.
·﹃
﹄·
Jimmy looked odd, like a fish and a boy all in one, as he approached her in a panic. “No, Lizzie. I want to talk.”
“You got tall. Did Joel do this to you?” Her heart dropped.
She felt like she was drowning. Isn’t that all suffocation in the end? Were they gonna strangle her all over again? Why was Jimmy a fish? Why was he drowning her? Why did she have a life she couldn’t remember?
·﹃
﹄·
“Lizzie?”
“What am I doing out here?” She brushed the sand off her skirt.
She felt the twisting in her mind. She knew then and she knew now something was playing with her… Keeping her from her husband. Keeping her from…
·﹃
﹄·
She stood in a swamp, the water to her waist. Her clear and crashing ocean not too far in the distance. She stomached the algae for her brother. He was off fighting with their neighbors and she was left to feed the cod. She heard whispers on the wind, but couldn’t be bothered.
Lizzie whipped around, trying to look at the face of the Secret Keeper but she couldn’t. She tried to scream but the whispers she heard on that faithful day deafened her now.
·﹃
﹄·
Memory after memory floods over her. A life she had with and without Joel. A life she had with and without Jimmy. She couldn’t understand why one day she woke up and he was her brother. But she knew she loved him like one. No matter what… It explained a lot. It explained almost everything.
“So, are you our canary now?”
She blinked. “That’s what Grian calls Jim.”
“Make a deal with us and we will give you whatever you want.”
Deals. Deals made her dead… Today was a deal. Going to the end to help Joel with his task to kill Scott. Scott… She had made a deal with Scott. Had that locked all this in for her? That deal with destiny? The words made her sick.
“I’m not a fool, I’m not gonna make a deal with you. I have had my fair share of deals and they turned sour.”
She turned back around, but the face was gone and she was just left alone in the void. She wouldn’t have a fit about it though. She had a lot to think about now.