Oddlands Magazine: Ever Dream by A.L. Frederickson
Lara let her flashlight play over the hulking object leaning against the rough cave wall. She scanned it to confirm her suspicions. A cryo-chamber. But more than double the width of a standard unit. She could almost discern the pale blob of a face distorted by the frosted transparasteel.None of the records from the mining ops mentioned anyone being left behind. Anyone alive, anyway. But here he was. Left for the United World Confederation salvage operations to decide his fate. Messages took months to reach the relay station, and months more before orders would come back. It was part of why this sort of deep space mission was considered suicide. Part of why she’d volunteered.
Lara flipped on her vocorder. “Low level life signs consistent with cryosleep,” she reported, scanning the chamber again. “All systems seem to be intact and functioning. There is no indication of a wake-up timer being set.” Foolish and dangerous. No cryochamber lasted forever, and on this frozen rock it was a miracle he’d been found at all. Mining operations had dried up two centuries ago, and until someone had had the bright idea of trying to salvage their refuse, no one had had any reason to set foot here.
Lara studied the main control panel, on the front of the chamber. “I make out what look to be the basic controls. Seems to be a basic idiot-proof on-off. Totally automated.” So someone had to have pushed the button to initiate the cycle. Which meant, in all likelihood, he was left here deliberately. With no timer. No chance of waking.
Lara lightly touched the control pad. It burst to life with hash mark writing. She studied it, but couldn’t make heads or tails of it. She noted it, then took an image of the writing. It didn’t look like any human or alien script she’d ever seen. Some new alien culture? The face blob looked human though, and despite how early space age humans flattered themselves, no other alien race thus far were merely humans with pointed ears and slanted eyebrows.
In light of this new development - the unfamiliar script - the cryo-chamber became highly suspect. Readings showed approximate equivalents to standard units, aside from the odd shape and odder location. Suspiciously similar enough to make her wonder if someone had decided to play a tasteless joke. “Lets make Loopy Lara think she’s found an alien.”
But then, the cost of customizing a functioning cryo-chamber and changing just enough to make it look alien put it out of reach of the usual yuksters.
Still, close calls had taught her to be cautious.
Lara examined the chamber again. There didn’t appear to be any booby-traps, even cleverly hidden ones. No remote cameras either. Lara made a few more notes and opened a comms channel to the base.
“PX3-970 reporting an anomaly,” she said. “Sending my preliminary notes.” Lara transmitted her recordings and settled in to wait. It would take Wes a few minutes to digest her find and get back to her. With an alien being in the mix, he’d want to be personally involved. Heck, Command might want to take a look.
“Lara!” Wes came back sooner than she’d expected, sounding excited enough to wet himself. He should be. Alien life was his specialty, and this was their first live one. And not only alive, but unclassified. “Are there any other artifacts aside from the chamber itself?”
“No,” she replied, eyes doing another sweep just in case she’d missed some small detail. She didn’t find so much as a cave drawing, or anything that couldn’t be explained by mining debris.
“Oh.” The disappointment in his voice was nearly tangible. He should be used to it by now. Disappointment was part of life, especially in the study of alien life forms. Most of them were found fossilized. Not many more were actually sentient.
This one, however, showed all the earmarks of not only being sentient, but coming from a decently advanced civilization, seeing as how they’d developed cryo-technology roughly equivalent with the UWC.
Right then, nothing for it but to wait for a retrieval team to get their tails down here. And wait she did, for three full hours in the eerie half light created by the cryo-chamber’s control panel and her own flashlight beam.
In the end they decided to haul the entire unit back to base, in the interests of containment and study.
The UWC base was actually the old mining base, retrofitted with modern upgrades in technology and all the leaks plugged. Salvage ops were just as Spartan as mining ops, so there hadn’t been much in the way of significant alteration. Wes was waiting for them on the other side of the airlock, hopping from one foot to the other like a little boy. He ran up and threw his arms around Lara before she’d even fully shed her suit. She grunted as the air left her lungs.
But just as quickly, he let go of her and darted to the cryo-chamber. Lara felt a small pang. Wes was the closest she’d had to a romantic entanglement since leaving the station. Mostly because he was sweet and minded his own business, though annoying at times with his unwanted old-fashioned chivalry. But, she reminded herself, his purpose here was to study any signs of alien life they found. Until now he’d been little more than a useless lump on this planetoid. Now he had a chance to work.
Lara finished stripping her suit off, and went to the quarantine chambers to wait.
#
After the final safety checks, Wes nearly bouncing in excitement, they came to stand before the cryo-chamber.
Wes gestured toward it. “Lara, if you would do the honors, being the discoverer.”
Lara took a deep breath, heart beginning to flutter. Stupid, really. Some of Wes’s excitement must have rubbed off.
She stepped forward, lifting her hand to the control panel. Her hand hesitated, a brief misgiving.
Rustling wings. Breath of wind.
Lara stiffened. No one else reacted to the sound.
“Forgotten how to push a button, Lara?” someone called out.
Lara shot a glare over her shoulder before initiating the thaw cycle. She must’ve heard someone shuffling their feet. It was nothing.
A whisper of sound. Faint sigh of movement.
Lara spun. “Did you say something?”
Wes looked bewildered. “No.”
An explosive hiss and blast of cold air made her startle and whirl back. But it was only the cryo-chamber breaking its seal. Super cooled gasses now leaked from its edges in light wisps of mist.
Adrenaline strumming her nerves, Lara took a step back for safety, ignoring the soft snicker behind her. She checked the atmospheric mix, as did half the room, as an automatic reflex. The scrubbers seemed to be handling the sudden inflow of cryo-gasses without any trouble.
When the hiss had died to a faint trickle of mist, Lara cautiously pulled the front panel of the cryochamber open, keeping a sharp eye on atmospherics. The last thing they all needed was cryo-poisoning. Not that the alien might not have it already. There was only so long the human body could stand being immersed in cryo-chemicals, as they’d learned in early disastrous tests. But the scrubbers still seemed to be fine.
The barrier between them now gone, Lara studied the alien.
An angel, was Lara’s first thought. She quickly banished the idea. Angels didn’t exist. And even if they did, they certainly wouldn’t be in a cryo-freeze.
Still, the huge, black, feathered wings attached to the otherwise human-seeming body were quite striking. Especially contrasted with the cryo-induced otherworldly pallor of his face, emphasized by the long ebony hair draping past his shoulders. It really didn’t seem right that the cryosuit he wore - God only knew how he’d gotten the thing around those wings - was dark blue, not angelic white.
Aside from the wings, he still appeared to possess human anatomy. That didn’t mean there weren’t internal differences, but given that the cryo-chamber was so close to their own models, the internals should be at least reasonably similar.
The alien’s eyelids now flickered wildly, indicative of partial wakefulness, and that he was thawed enough for neuromuscular responses. Soon the circulatory system would be fully functioning, which would bring the central nervous system to full function. He could then walk off any lingering stiffness.
The alien abruptly pitched forward, catching her off guard. Her immediate reflex was to catch him, stepping forward to intercept his fall. For all that he still nearly knocked her over, he was remarkably light for all that wingspan. Hollow bones, logic immediately supplied. Like a bird.
She awkwardly eased the alien to the floor, unbalanced by the wings. The feel of those wings startled her. They were soft and warm against her arm, more like the sleek fur of a cat than she imagined a bird’s feathers would feel like. The touch also banished any thought that they were fake, or cybernetic implants.
His eyes flew open.
Stars reflected in an endless pool of black.
Lara jerked back, ripping her eyes away from his.
The alien’s eyes were black. Solid void. Even the whites. Only the glossy reflection of the lights showed there was anything there but an empty black hole.
The medical team moved in, scanning for cryo-poisoning and contagions. Lara backed away to give them room, regaining her equilibrium. Eyes were just eyes. Even alien ones.
Wes had moved in as well, bombarding the alien with questions. “Do you know how long you’ve been in the cryo-chamber? How did you come to be there? Do you remember your name?”
Lara turned on heel, more than willing to leave Wes and the med team to it.
“Three days,” the alien said clearly and succinctly, his voice rippling down Lara’s spine. “I am here for three days.”
Lara proceeded through decontamination as quickly as possible.
#
Those eyes haunted her the rest of the day. Those strange, eerie eyes that gazed through her, exposing her. Knowing her.
Why her? Was it simply because she was the first one those eyes had settled on?
“He’s fascinating,” Wes chattered at dinner that night. “His eyes seem to be completely pupil, yet he doesn’t flinch away from bright light. I suspect his vision is articulated to read a completely different spectrum, perhaps not even infrared or ultraviolet, but some wavelength we can’t even guess at.”
Lara poked unenthusiastically at her re-hydrated chicken, letting Wes ramble. So much for a quiet, romantic dinner. It wasn’t the first time he’d spent dinner conjecturing upon some alien culture, and she really should have expected this, with Wes having a living, breathing, interrogatable specimen on his hands. It didn’t make it any easier to swallow.
“Did you hear?” Wes continued. “He congratulated Heather Gonzales on her baby. Which, of course, confused her, as she didn’t have one. But she got herself checked out, and she’s a week pregnant. A week! That’s barely detectable!”
“Amazing,” Lara said flatly. She was quite tired of hearing about wonder boy. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem like Wes would tire of it any time soon. She blew out the candles. Wes didn’t even notice.
“And he keeps insisting he’s only here for three days, then he has to go back. Go back where? The cryo-chamber? His home planet? He won’t say. Always clams up on me. Won’t even explain how he knows Galactic Basic.
“Oh, did I tell you? He says he’s been in that cryo-chamber for a thousand years, which of course is patently impossible. He’d be long dead of cryo-poisoning, unless his species is especially resistant to cryo-chemicals, which I really don’t see how it would be possible since, get this, as far as we can tell, he has no immune system! When meds figured that out, they wanted to slam him in a sterile room, but someone pointed out he’s got to have some kind of defense, or else he’d already be dead of the common cold.”
Lara let him rant, waving his fork over the chicken he hadn’t yet touched, while she sat coldly unresponsive. She may as well have been a hunk of metal sitting in the chair.
“When I asked him what he was doing in the cryo-chamber in the first place, you know what he said? ‘Waiting.’ ‘Waiting for what?’ I said. ‘For my search to end.’ Wouldn’t tell me what he was searching for. Just sort of looked at me.”
Stars reflected in an endless pool of void.
Lara shot from her chair. “I’m going to bed,” she said, the words barely escaping before she was out the door, leaving Wes gape-mouthed behind her.
#
She slept deeply that night, dreaming of rustling wings, and the space between the stars.
#
Lara’s plan to resume life as normal was rudely interrupted by a comm from Wes.
“Lara?” Wes sounded unusually hesitant and subdued.
“Yes?” Lara answered, keeping her tone civil. After all, he might be calling to apologize for ignoring her last night.
“He wants to see you.”
“Who?” Lara asked, confused.
“The alien.”
Lara had to remember to breathe. “Me?”
“Yeah. He. said it was important. To talk to you.”
“Why?”
“Didn’t say. Come on, Lara. He probably just wants to thank you for finding him.”
Lara didn’t think so. But then, she wasn’t sure what to think.
“What harm could it do?” Wes prodded.
Lara found her mouth agreeing, even as she had to squash her unease.
#
Lara stepped into the requisite transparent-walled observatory. It seemed that human nature longed for a glimpse of its environment, however uninviting it might be. Though a glimpse, it seemed, was all that was needed. It was a very small room. It didn’t even warrant a bench. But it only had one door, so security had deemed it contained enough to grant the alien’s request to meet her there.
And there he was.
He stood at the wall-window, pressing both hands flat to the transparent metal, gazing longingly upward. He seemed to be soaking in the starlight the way a human might soak up the sun after years underground.
The sight stirred old memories. “Lara, don’t turn off the display. You’ll let that sunlight in.” Only her mother could make “sunlight” a dirty word. Lara squashed the memory.
“Beautiful,” he said. “Isn’t it.”
She looked out at the barren, icy landscape, pockmarked and ravaged by the old mining operations. Were they looking at the same thing? Were they seeing the same thing? Or, as Wes had speculated, did those eyes see a different spectrum?
The old, old memories began to surface again, freeing themselves from carefully built cages. She used to be able to see what others couldn’t. She used to pity them because they couldn’t see the wonders she could. She hadn’t cared that they thought she was. odd.
After a few long, silent moments, he glanced over his shoulder at her. “Look.” He held out a hand, gesturing her over.
She ignored the hand, but did move to the window. The view was the same.
Lara shrugged. “All I see is a bunch of rocks.”
“Look closer.”
Lara rolled her eyes. She looked again. Still the same. All right, perhaps it might have been beautiful once. Before the mining crews. If it weren’t for the slag heaps and scars, if it were just the natural rocky landscape, rimed in ice. ice painted with deep greens and blues and purples, even pinks. Deep colored shadows hiding in the lee of the craggy mountains. Then when the planetoid’s sun rose, pale and wan, just a stronger star, the ice would glimmer with earthbound stars..
Lara tore away, turning her back to the window, her arms folding tightly across her chest. “Just a bunch of rocks.”
He was silent for a moment, regarding her nearly as intently as he’d taken in the view through the observatory window. “You’ve forgotten me,” he said quietly.
Lara forced a laugh. “Forgotten you? I could hardly have forgotten you. I’m speaking to you.”
He shook his head, feathers lightly rustling. “You’ve forgotten my name.”
Lara hardly knew how to respond. How was she to remember his name if he’d never told her?
“You had dreams once,” he said.
The unexpected statement caught her off guard. “Doesn’t every child?” She pushed away from the window, searching for something, anything, to give her attention to. The room was uncooperatively empty.
“You let them die.” It wasn’t an accusation, but it wasn’t a question either.
Lara shrugged it off. “Children have to grow up and face the real world someday.” She began to pace little circles.
“Why did you come here?”
“We’re a salvage operation. Our purpose here is to assess -”
“Why did you come here?”
She felt his eyes on her. She firmly turned her back on him. “Because. station life is boring.. I didn’t..” She felt his eyes searching out the true answer. She shied away. Breathed deeply. “I wanted excitement..” Something was missing. “Deep space salvage seemed adventurous..” I didn’t belong. “It’s just as boring though.” I had to escape.
The words died on her tongue.
I wanted to see the stars.
“Do you miss them?”
“Who?” Those she’d left behind on the station? Her parents? After being hidden from the world for eighteen years, she’d been summarily thrown out into the world to sink or swim on her own. She’d made her share of mistakes, and couldn’t say she’d made a good show of swimming, but at least she hadn’t drowned. She hadn’t made many friends either. Her parents, she was certain, were glad she wasn’t their problem anymore.
No, she didn’t miss anyone on the station.
“Your dreams,” he clarified.
Her thoughts sharply re-oriented with an unexpected pang. She snuffed it.
She bent and picked up a feather, avoiding him as much as finding something to do with her hands. He was right. She’d had dreams once. Would have gone so far as to call herself a dreamer, once. Life was cruel to dreamers.
She’d gone planet-side once in her childhood. She could almost remember her old excitement. She would walk on dirt and rocks without getting yelled at for disturbing the hydroponics. She would look up and see a real sky, real clouds, not just a metal ceiling she could almost jump up and touch. She wondered if she would get dizzy. She wondered if it would feel like she could fall into the sky. She wanted to know what it was like to fall into the sky. What would clouds feel like?
But planet-side, the metropolis was safely ensconced in a pressure dome, the sky nothing but an artificially blue ceiling that rose higher than she could ever reach. The ground was not dirt, but metal and duracrete.
That was when her dreams began to die.
No, she corrected herself fiercely. It’s when I planted my feet on the ground and began to buckle down. No more asking stupid questions. No more silly thoughts.
“How did you come to be in that cryo-chamber?” she said, trying to deflect the conversation back toward him.
“I was searching for you.”
“Searching for me?” Her eyes narrowed in suspicion. Just what was he trying to pull? Was this an elaborate joke after all? She’d murder the lot of them if it were.
His eyes measured her. Searched her. She raised mental shields, willing those eyes to go away and leave her alone. It would have been better if it had been a prank.
“To bring you back,” he said.
“Bring me back,” she said dubiously. “To the station? I’m not going.”
“No.”
“Where then?” she challenged.
“Let me show you.” He stepped close. Too close. They were bare inches apart.
She began to refuse, though she wasn’t sure if she’d say, “No, thank you,” or “Get lost.” I don’t want to see.
But before she could decide, much less make a sound, he swooped down and touched her lips with his.
A cold tingling washed down over her body. She felt her heart slow. Stop.
She couldn’t pull herself away. She didn’t want to.
She felt him pulling her. Pulling her away, though neither of them moved. Where are you taking me?
Trust me.
She dimly registered that the floor had fallen away, and the walls had melted into vaporous nothing, leaving only endless black.
No. There was also light.
“Come with me,” he whispered, though he didn’t move. Time had stopped.
She turned to face him. I’m already facing him.
His skin glowed starlight. Was starlight. His eyes still held the depthless void, but they also held the stars.
He stretched out his hand. “Fly with me,” he said, promises in his voice. In his eyes.
I have no wings.
You’ve only forgotten how to use them.
She saw a hand reach for his, glowing blue as a summer sky just before daybreak. Her own hand.
But I haven’t moved. And I’ve never seen a summer sky.
Her hand hesitated.
“Let go,” he said. “Fly with me.”
This isn’t real. People don’t glow. They can’t hold the stars in their eyes.
She trembled.
He stepped toward her, reaching for her hand.
But I don’t understand! that strong voice persisted.
Just trust.
I can’t! No! Stop! Lara would die.
She ripped away. Pulled free of those impossible eyes. She ran. Her feet fell slap-slap against the floor, reassuringly solid, jolting through her with every step. Solid impact telling her she remained in the familiar world she knew.
She ran her hands over the walls. Solid. Irrefutable. Immovable. Real. She turned the corner, colliding with something soft but solid. So solid. He grunted slightly as her solid form met his.
“Wes.” Lara said stupidly. Her own voice, or perhaps it was the name, banished the last lingering surrealism. Lara became aware of her heart, flooding her veins with adrenaline, pumping fit to burst. Her lungs heaved as if starved for air.
Wes took them in, also noting her not-quite-controlled expression. Lara realized she must look wild, with huge, wide eyes, gasping as if she’d run laps around the entire compound. Which come to think of it, she might have.
“Lara -”
Lara quickly pushed away from him, a hand going to her hair. She jumped sideways, nearly ramming her shoulder into the wall. A feather had brushed her cheek.
But it was the one she’d been holding, now damp from the sweat of her hand. She gently smoothed a few of the quills.
Wes reached for her, but she brushed him away.
“I’m fine,” she snapped, tucking the feather in her belt. She tugged her shirt straight, and finished smoothing her hair. She brushed her hands together, trying to dry some of the sweat.
She’d left the station behind to escape. The stares, the whispers, the snickering behind her back. She’d left it light years behind. She’d traded it for near total isolation. It had followed her anyway.
No! She was fine.
“Lara,” Wes said in stronger tones.
“I’m fine!” She pushed past him. She was fine, she told herself. The dream or vision or whatever it was, it hadn’t been real. The alien had let off some sort of pheromone, or hallucinogenic when he’d kissed her. That was all.
She was fine.
#
Her mind struggled to find words to define him, name him. Alien, faery, angel, sidhe, ghost. Trying to fit him into their molds. All the while he simply stood there, hand outstretched, eyes saying, “I am what I am. Will you accept me? Will you trust me?”
Her logic shied from accepting what it could not name. Angel, sidhe, alien, demon. The words encircled him, trying to shape him to their forms. Nothing could touch those eyes.
Words circled him, angry, inadequate. All they could do was tear at the feathers that fluttered to the floor.
She woke with a gasp. Second night gone. One left.
She lifted a shaking hand to her forehead, jumping when a feather brushed her cheek. But it was only the one she’d fallen asleep clutching. Now it looked much the worse for wear after her restless night, bent and crumpled, most of the quills smashed. She tried to smooth it with trembling fingers, but it was beyond repair. She dropped it on her nightstand and tightly wrapped her arms around herself.
One night left.
#
Lara tried to ignore him.
She tried to pretend he didn’t exist, like some pouting school child. Occasionally rustling wings would invade her thoughts, but she shoved them away. Still, she was haunted by the dogged impression that if she didn’t acknowledge him, didn’t. do. something. then he would vanish, as if he’d been a figment of her imagination all along.
She tried to throw herself into the endless minutiae of life. Tried to dodge - for the time - anything to do with him.
But she’d begun to look at the base, at its inhabitants, at the grimy walls, the sagging ceilings, the scuffed floors. Started noticing things. Small things. Initials carved into a hidden corner. The fingerprint of a long-dead miner, perfectly preserved on the airless planetoid. The base began to feel sadly lost in time, as though its previous occupants had left only the day before the salvage team arrived. As if their last echoes had been trapped in the empty corridors.
Mere days ago she could have simply sat in her quarters absorbing endless reports, uncaringly oblivious to all else. Now her thoughts would not stay still.
She wondered who had used her quarters in the base’s mining days. Man? Woman? A pair? Friends? Lovers? Did they love each other, or merely tolerate each other for the sake of alleviating the soul-crushing loneliness?
And a part of her knew that if she listened hard enough to age-old whispers, reached out toward the long-dead fingers, she would know. She shied away from such thoughts.
What was happening to her? Lara was practical, logical, pragmatic even. This wasn’t like her. She’d crushed those old, childish whimsies years ago. She kept both feet solidly on the ground. Held her thoughts tightly in check.
Lara managed to avoid him for most of the day. Until she was called to see him.
Lara wanted to refuse. She wanted to say he could wait until tomorrow. But that nagging, irrational part of her told her that tomorrow would be too late. Too late for what, it wouldn’t say.
He was in the observatory. A sneaking feeling told her he hadn’t moved since she left him.
His changed appearance, so drastic in a mere 24 hours, shocked her. He looked not simply pale, but transparent. The skin of his hands had shrunk to hug bone. He looked light and frail as a child. Deep shadows in his cheeks made them seem sunken. His eyes seemed larger than ever. His close-tucked wings looked thin, like shaky autumn branches with only a few clinging leaves.
Dying.
She shoved the thought away. There was no way he could have picked up anything so quickly debilitating.
“Three days.” The dry whisper was so different from his usual voice that it took her a moment to realize he had spoken.
“Nonsense,” she said, but her own voice sounded thin.
The wings shivered. A dry feather rattled to the floor, thin and insubstantial, rimmed with gray.
“I cannot stay,” he said. “Here. As I am.”
“Then we will arrange transport.” the words died in her mouth, leaving a bitter aftertaste.
“My time runs short.”
“What can I do?” The words escaped without her permission.
“Come with me.” Fly with me.
“Where?” I can’t.
“Back to where we belong.” Trust me.
“I belong here,” she insisted, stubborn, though that old, wistful longing had returned. The same longing that had made her sit for hours before her window, staring up at the stars, fingers splayed on the glass as if she could find a way to reach through that one last barrier and touch them.
Odd feelings, old feelings, had returned. Wishing she knew the smell of rain. The touch of fat, cold drops on her skin, soaking her clothes and making them cling to her body. To see a real sky, roiling with clouds, with no barriers keeping the wind from enveloping her. To breathe air that hadn’t been scrubbed of all life, hadn’t been recycled through millions of lungs. Air purified by the rain.
She wanted it. She longed for it. And for the first time in years remembered what that meant.
“You know where you belong.”
Not here.
She spun away, reaching for the door panel. Her hand hesitated. He didn’t speak.
She slid the door open and left.
#
She dreamed. Was it a dream? She lay in her bed. But it wasn’t her room. Dark colors with fluid forms played at the peripherals of her awareness. The sigh of wind held voices, whispering to one another. She knew they spoke of her.
Her limbs were wisps of vapor. She could not move them. Did she want to? She was not frightened. It was not a nightmare. She felt no need to move. Only to watch.
He came. The light had faded from his skin. The stars had left his eyes. His wings had faded to gray mist. She wanted to reach for him. Wanted to glow like the sky and restore his light. But she could only watch. She is lost, the windy voices whispered. Free yourself. Come back to us.
He sadly shook his head and turned away. He would not return without her. She tried to call out to him. To call him back. She could not find her voice. He faded away.
She struggled to stand. Fought her invisible bonds.
“It’s not rational!” a voice cried. Her own. “It’s not logical! It’s not possible!”
She strove to find the words to fight back. Now she could feel the bindings. Her own words. Her own thoughts.
She flung free of them, leaving words behind.
She ran.
The endlessly shifting dreamworld began to steady and resolve itself into rooms and corridors. That frightened her more than anything else. She knew what it meant. She had to find him. Fast.
And she did.
He slumped on the floor, head bowed, his back to her, his wings literally bare shivering branches, transparent and insubstantial. One single feather clung to a fragile twig.
The rest of him seemed not transparent, but more real.
She slid to her knees beside him and gently lifted his face. It had filled out, no longer hollow and skeletal, the skin touched with what she once would have regarded as a healthy pink.
But she understood now. And understood the sacrifice he was willing to make. His life, one way or another. For her sake.
She felt a cool drop of wet fall from the corner of her eye to trace a line down her cheek.
His eyes were still the depthless void, but that would change soon. Soon the rim of an iris would appear, where whites would form.
“Don’t do this.” She heard her thought, though her throat was so tight she couldn’t speak.
He smiled faintly. But then the smile slid from his face, along with all sign of recognition, replaced by a slight frown.
She saw the last feather flutter free.
Before it reached the ground, before he lost himself forever, she spoke his Name.
#
The next morning, no one could explain how Lara had come to be lying on the floor dead, a smile on her face, and a black feather clutched in her hand.
