Chapter 4 Stormwinds
The noise of a loud emergency siren bellowed out the speakers, awakening Elise startled and disoriented. In a daze, she glanced around confused until she witnessed a mass exodus of students rushing out the door. There was an immediate evacuation order, echoing across the university campus.
At once, she stood up but saw something in her peripherals – peering towards the window, setting her sights upon a colossal familiar figure.
It looked familiar, something she had already seen before: A towering cloud of dust moving closer and closer, colliding towards the ground in a toroidal motion. It was a tornado.
“Elise!” she recognized the voice as Emma’s.
She remained motionless, her eyes fixed to the oncoming sight– but was not afraid.
Storm winds brushed against the glass, as heavy gusts of wind howled like an angry echo. Although the wind accelerated into a gust, she took a step closer to the window. In her psyche, her fear was replaced with an immense inner curiosity –like a déjà vu called out to her, daring her to move.
“Elise! We need to get out of here!”
Emma took her hand but Elise stood her ground.
“Hold on.” Elise spoke. “I had a dream about this.”
“What?!” Emma responded, as a flash of lightening illuminated the skies.
“This was in my drea-” A sudden event disturbed.
Meters before them, the sound of broken glass shattered onto the floor with a thunderous boom. It became very clear to both of them: it was time to get out here.
Emma took the initiative, stepping forward clutching Elise’s hand with a fast motion. “Let’s go.”
Under a quick breath, Elise regained her cognitive thoughts and nodded. “Stay close.”
They followed out the door into a corridor packed with moving students. A growing reverb of voices and shouts filled the congested air. The emergency alarms were ringing with a sense of discord and adventure as they proceeded down a flight of stairs.
“Omg, did you see that tornado?”
“Yeah, it was huge!”
“Everyone over here!”
She saw professors joining students as the police were shouting directions and orders to the storm shelter. In the background, there were quick exchanges of voices between the colleague’s around them.
Minutes later, the masses of staff, faculty members, and students alike entered into a dimly lit basement as vibrations of heavy wind currents escalated in noise and magnitude.
But Elise had her attention elsewhere. She was struck about how this tornado had shown up, and how it left a startling sensation impossible to ignore. This tornado was in her dream – and recalling it, she felt those emotions clearly – it was an ancient distant memory echoing into her soul.
Her heartbeat pulsated with adrenaline as she spoke.
“Hey, so remember about-”
She glimpsed around looking for Emma. But she was nowhere in sight. Immediately, her senses went into an alarmed state as she pulled out her phone – only to her dismay, there was no service available.
“Damn it,” she whispered over the chaos. In vain, she called out Emma’s name repeatedly over the thunder and emergency bell. But it was to no avail.
Pandemonium continued to ensue, as Elise was being pushed forward by the momentum of dozens of students behind her – edging her to keep moving. In an instant, it sounded like there was an explosion.
A pounding boom of thunder exploded into noise, overpowering all other sounds nearby as if there was a detonation of mortar shells. What followed next was a deafening silence and caused all movement in room into a grinding halt.
In the standstill, it left everyone a panging vibe of unease as a boom of thunder sundered closer. And then another.
Elise felt her heartbeat racing again but slowly, progressed it to slow down. There was anxiety and fear in the air, but her eyes shone.
In the background, the crowd slowly began to move again, as Elise carefully weaved across the masses looking for a place to settle down. Soon, she entered inside an empty photography classroom, flickering with trails of lightening.
“Okay,” Elise gathered herself together. “Just breath slow… and feel your heartbeat.”
She began to close her eyes. The space around her was in constant motion but did not budge, as she garnered her will together in thought and spirit.
Her eyes closed, she centered her mind in solitude. In sync inside a fine tuned resonance, a surge of concentration solidified, as she garnered herself on a task: this moment.
Calm, composed, and collected, she inhaled deeply. In a hum, her mind was in silence. Exhaling deeply, her inner cells, blood, and muscle moved with this fine tuned frequency. She imagined what it felt to be clear of all distress and worries – like the fortitude of an inner sunrise under a quiet resolve – merging with her will. Grounding herself in stillness, she began to merge in union to the epicenter of her being: a meditative state of Oneness.
Receptors began firing across a vast expansion of synapses of neurons and neurotransmitters – in activation, her medial prefrontal cortex began to elevate and the amygdata, known as the fight-or-flight stress, soothed with ease. Her breath was uninterrupted and effortless.
She entered deeper into the zone, igniting the soul’s inner fire – the will and resolve. Moving up to the inner space inside her heart, the space around her synchronized in place – piece by piece – as time elapsed in a sequence of focused and collected breaths of air.
Solidifying her intent, she gathered herself ready towards the completion of this meditation.
With a final breath, she released the tension within the air – allowing the chaos around her spacial radius to infused with an aura of peace. Slowly, the atmosphere shifted in resonance, like music transmuting distress, replacing it with liberation and serenity.
Her eyes opened, as the background noise of the storms began to halt, and falter ever so gently.