A/N: Another happy chapter for yooooouuuuu! XD Yeah, I’m pretty hyper right now. I’m on my second can of Mountain Dew. Yay for me, maybe not yay for you. I hope none of the caffeine-driven insanity made its way into my chapter. . .

                                      Devokan Tsahno

                                           Chapter 3

                                   No Place Like Home

Two years later. . .

Of all the Earthly things I had missed over the past few years, Nyquil was at the top of my list. People don’t appreciate the things they have until they don’t have them anymore. Medicine was one of those things. I mentally winced as another hacking cough found it’s way out of my friend’s throat. I put my pen down and looked at him.

“Atrus, my friend, shouldn’t you be in bed?”

“Nonsense, Cecilia. It is nothing.”

“It’s been ‘nothing’ for the past three months, Atrus.”

He said nothing. Instead, he turned back to the book he was reading. Despite myself, I smiled. He was reading the one thing that I had brought with me from Earth: “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”. I was still holding it as I linked to Myst. Atrus was fascinated by Stevenson’s tales, of which that book contained many. But my smile slipped from my face as I listened to yet another coughing fit.

“Atrus-”

“Why do you think he did it?”

“What?”

“Jekyll. He knew that Hyde was evil, yet he still drank the potion.”

I knew that he was trying to distract me from his illness. He was like a little kid that distracted you with tales to delay his bedtime. I decided to humor him.

“I think that there was a small part of Jekyll that reveled in being Hyde,” I said, “And that part had a loud enough voice to influence him.”

Atrus pondered this a moment, then, “But was it really Jekyll speaking? Or was it Hyde?”

“Or was it Atrus trying to delay resting because he thinks he’s fine, even though he isn’t?”

“I am fine!” he protested, just as another cough took him. I raised an eyebrow. Atrus looked at me for a moment, then gave in.

“Alright, I will rest. Perhaps I will feel better in the morning.”

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Atrus’ illness wasn’t that hard to trace. He had been spending quite a bit of time on Stoneship. I had been to the Age only once, and I didn’t much like it. It was cold, dreary, desolate, and uninviting. But it seemed to hold endless wonders for Atrus, who would sit for hours at his telescope, even though the endless fog and drizzle prevented him from seeing much. He was showing me plans for a lighthouse he wanted to build before the cold decided it liked Atrus better than Stoneship.

It was painful to watch the slow and steady downfall of Atrus’ health. At first, it was nothing. A small cough, a little fatigue, nothing that had us very worried. Until that morning when we found Atrus unconscious on the dock with a raging fever, we had no idea that he was even ill. He didn’t wake up until the following evening, delirious and frightened. I had to keep Sirrus and Achenar outside while Catherine and Anna tried to calm him down.

That was almost three months ago. Now, the symptoms of his illness came and went with the suddenness and unpredictability that one would usually only associate with teenage mood swings. One day, he would get through the day without a cough or complaint, and the next he would be bedridden with a burning fever and coughs that made even Anna wince. None of this was helped by Atrus’ desire to act like nothing was happening. He wanted to Write and to work and to experiment. It was only at Anna’s insistence that he even remained on Myst Island!

It shook me to the core, Atrus’ illness. These past two years have been hard on me. I lost everything the day I found the Myst Book. Everyone I loved, everything I knew. . . even my perceptions of reality had been skewed by the things I’d seen. Atrus worked hard to make the transition as smooth as possible. It was at his insistence that I began to learn D’ni, the language used to Write. He showed me his inventions, invited me on trips to his Ages, taught me basic concepts about the Books themselves. . . I was thrown into his world, but he made me feel like I had been invited to it. I began to regard Atrus not as a host, but as a dear friend and a sort of favorite uncle. You know, the uncle that you see only at holidays but you spend those holidays talking about everything, and at the next holiday you pick up the conversation right where you left off.

It was a good feeling, really. It was like I was a part of a real family. So much, in fact, that I was making myself sick worrying about Atrus being sick. But I had to try to keep myself as upbeat and happy as possible. It was this thought that made me gather up my papers, pens, and ink bottle and walk back down the hallway to my room.

I smiled as I placed the papers on the desk in my room. It was the same room that I had first woken up in, though it looked much different now. At first, there was just a bed and a nightstand in the room. Now, however, there was a desk, a few chairs, a lamp, a wardrobe, and a bookshelf added to the small room. The few drawings on the wall gave the room a sense of personality. I looked at the nearest one and laughed quietly to myself.

It was one of Achenar’s original creations. It showed Achenar, Sirrus, and me standing in front of the library, drawn with all the charm of an eight year old. It always made me smile, no matter how I felt or however bad a day I was having.

“Cecilia! Ceciliaaaaaaaa!”

Speaking of which. . .

“Cecilia! C’mon! Me an’ Sirrus found a lizard!”

I laughed, saying, “Alright, alright. I’ll be up in a second!”


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“See, Cecilia? Isn’t it pretty?”

It was. The lizard in question was bright yellow with smatterings of greens and browns. It was sitting complacently on the rim of the Eye Pool, sunning itself. Achenar was as close as he dared to get, staring intently at it. Sirrus was right next to me, clutching my hand partly in fear, partly in excitement.

“D’you think Father will let me keep ‘im?”

I shook my head.

“I doubt it. Besides, don’t you think it’d be happier out here, with its friends?”

“. . . yeah, I guess.”

“H-how do y-you know it has f-friends, Cecilia?” asked Sirrus. I smiled and kneeled down to his level.

“Because,” I said, “Everyone has friends.”

“Like Emmit an’ Branch an’ Will?”

“Yes, like them.”

“Did you have friends? On Earth, I mean?” asked Achenar, sitting down on the grass. I sat, too, and watched with mild amusement as Sirrus climbed into my lap.

“I had a few friends.”

“What were they like? Were they like you?”

“I suppose they were. My best friend, David, was a lot like me.”

“Day-vid?” said Achenar, sounding out the unfamiliar name, “Is that a boy’s name?”

“Yes, it’s a boy’s name.”

“D-do you m-miss him?” asked Sirrus.

“Of course,” I said, “All the time. But he probably has his own life now. He probably has forgotten about me.”

Sirrus looked at me then, saying, “N-no one c-could forget you, C-cecilia.”

I smiled and hugged him close. That’s why I love the things little kids say. Whatever they say is said with such sincerity, because they usually only say what they truly mean. If only we were all like that.

A/N: Yeah, I know this chapter was really short, but I needed to set a few things up. I would combine chapter, but the next chapter is too long to do that XD

Oh, and if you haven't already noticed, this story has "TEH UBER TIMESKIPS OF DOOOOM!". Beware. .. they pop up often :P