An Australian story by Zeynep Yüksel
“It happened last summer in Sydney, Australia. I had travelled there with my parents and my sister for the first time ever. I had never set foot in Australia before. The second day of our trip, I decided to sit down on the balcony of our hotel room. Then, I took out my sketchbook to draw the Sydney Opera House.
That’s where it all went wrong.
As I was drawing, I noticed that I was accidentally smudging and ruining the original characters I had drawn a while back. I was sorry that I had drawn there but I soon forgot about it while continuing to draw the Opera House.
As I was about to finish it, I heard someone calling me from the room. I got up and saw a brunette with extremely messy braided hair. She had a scar on her right cheek elongating towards her jaw. What struck me the most were her electric blue eyes. She looked about 17 years old.
We stared at each other in confusion until I broke the awkward silence.
“Hello, who… are you?”, I asked her in Turkish.
The creepy thing about her was that she looked exactly like the real life version of the original character that I had created, back when I was 13.
She looked at me confused.
“Excuse-me?”
“Oh sorry. I speak English as well,” I informed her embarrassedly.” I asked you who you were.”
“My name?” she paused and held her hand for a handshake and answered, “Nevaeh. You?”
That was when it clicked. I ran towards the balcony and flipped the pages of my sketchbook while trying to calm down. Then, I found what I was looking for.
The page I had ruined earlier had one of Nevaeh’s drawings. But it wasn’t there. It had disappeared. Instead, there were glowing blue ink blots. I flipped through the previous pages to check if the other drawings of her were there.
They weren’t.
Suddenly she called.
“You still didn’t say your name.”
I looked at her, wide-eyed and explained, “I think it would be better if you didn’t know,” when suddenly an idea popped into my head. I lifted my hand into the air and announced, “Menayleyae”.
She disappeared into a glowing blue mist.
Since I had invented her; where she came from, her culture etc. I figured I should be able to reset everything by a cancelling phrase known only to the Grand Alchemist, his daughter and me,” she said putting an end to her story.”
After a long pause, our classmates roared from laughter.
The girl was embarrassed and was on the verge of crying. Her blood was boiling out of rage as she blurted out.
“You don’t believe me?! Eayelyanem!”
A dull blood red colored mist appeared by my side and everything went black.