14: The Weight of the Mission

"Climb"
Bloom blinked: there was something in her eyes, something that stung. She instinctively tried to reach for her face but she stopped right before doing it, frightened. Her fingers were desperately hung on a spike, her face a few millimetres from the rock and her feet resting on an invisible handholds. She closed her eyes and stood still, forbidding herself even to breathe, the itching forgotten in a second.
"You must climb"A mysterious voice was talking in her mind. Climbing? It was a miracle that she could still breathe. What on earth was she doing hung on a rock?
There was no way to look down and maybe it was better that way. She closed her eyes again, trying to concentrate on her surroundings. The only noise was the rustle of the wind, not too loud, and the rock felt warm under her fingers. She breathed in to calm her mad heart. At least the wall's slope let her put all of her weight on her legs.
"Climb"
That voice again, a woman's voice that sounded somehow familiar. She raised her head very slowly and found herself staring at what looked like other five meters of rock: beyond them she only saw sky. The rock around her wasn't too smooth, after all: she bent her leg searching for an higher handhold and found it without problems.
"Very good"
She sighed. Now she was obeying to a voice in her mind! If the girls could see her... the girls! What happened to them?
Her fingers were automatically looking for an handhold above her head while she leaned on her highest foot to gain ground. Maybe climbing wasn’t be her passion, but she realized she kinda liked it.
The last she remembered was the darkness around her, left from the sudden vanishing of Stella. How could she have woken up on a mountain? How did she arrive there?
The most frustrating thing was how slowly she was proceeding. She had to carefully control every handhold before looking for the other: if she had slipped her hold she could-
Maybe she could fly. It would be so easy to reach the top of that mountain flying!
She left her hold and carefully crossed her wrists above her head.
- Winx Butterflix!
Nothing happened and Bloom couldn't hold a huff.
She stubbornly proceeded, new heandhold for her foot, lift with attention, new handhold for her hands, repeat with the other foot. The sky looked nearer and nearer until her legs lifted her beyond the end of the wall where, after a forecourt of a few meters... there was another wall.
- Are you kidding me?- asked the fairy to the bunches of grass that dappled the forecourt. She lifted and let herself fall on her back on the rock, wheezing to catch a breath. The idea of being so high terrified her, but she couldn't shut up that part of her that, for curiosity or something, really wanted to lean and look down.
In that moment the notes of Sky's ringtone started: in the panic of the moment Bloom didn't realize that she had her phone in her pocket. She grabbed it, excited, pressed the button to activate the holocall and Sky's handsome face appeared in front her.
- Sky, thank heaven you called me! You'll never guess where I am now!
- Oh, let me guess: you're somewhere on a dangerous mission you didn't tell me about.
The boy's expression was unusually severe and Bloom frowned.
- ...what?
- Don't “what” me, you know very well what I'm talking about. Do you think I'm having fun staying here and asking myself what trouble I must save you from, next time? Or listening to my subjects' voices about how unfit the future Queen of Eraklyon is? But most importantly, how do you think I feel knowing that when you dove into these things you don't even have the time to warn me?
- I...
Bloom didn't know how to reply. Those words hurt her but the boy was right: how many times did she warn him before leaving for one of their missions? And what was the last time she was the one looking for him?
- Sky, I... I'm so sorry...
- Bloom, I'm asking for the last time. Come back home. Leave whatever mission you are on and start thinking about us, about Domino and Eraklyon, about what we want to build together. Return to me, or I...
Sky's lips tightened for a bit and then the boy continued with noticeable struggling.
- ... If you won't come back I swear I'll call off our engagement.