Lost Beyond the Cellar Door

they painted up your secrets with the lies they told to you and the least they ever gave you was the most you ever knew and you know I see right through you `cause the world got in your way what's the point in all this screaming you're not listening anyway - john rzeznik

The silence is almost palpable as I stand at the sink, filling a plastic cup with ice chips from a bag slowly melting into the drain. I had risen to get myself a glass of water, my throat dry from speaking for so long unaccustomedly, and when I asked her if she wanted some ice, she had nodded yes. The chips clink almost soundlessly into the cup and they glitter like frozen diamonds at me as I wait for her to say something. And as I turn around to hand her the glass with a spoon, she does. Her dark eyes graze mine, and not for the first time I am made aware of the sneaking, slow suspicion that I am in the presence of an intelligence far superior to mine. And also not for the first time a creeping burn takes a hold of my heart as I realize the depth of pain it must have taken to land her here, of all forsaken places.

A skinny hand darts out to take the glass, and I sit down again as she speaks.

"Do you still do those things?" Quietly, seriously.

"The drugs?" I ask, and her careful nod is a terse movement of concern that surprises me.

I am silent a moment as I drop my gaze from her face to look out of the window, the blinds wafting gently in the heat issuing from the radiator on the floor. Beyond the glass and night air is a snowswept landscape, and the snowflakes that are still falling are made from Victorian pictures and Christmas carols. For a half second I am filled with a vision of those sparkling crystals falling with almost angelic grace to light upon crimson gold hair, streetlamp shine blazing fire and glory upon an anointed mantle to create an ethereal innocence of beauty. I blink away sudden, wrenching tears as his face flashes across my mind's eye, his hair all impossibly aglow and his face an annihilating pool of radiance as he smiles at me from so, so far away. His eyes, diamond bright and as deep as aura blue, hold all the secrets of my soul and I can still read all the riddles of the world within them. The eyes of an angel, and I know I will never be able to forget their unforgivingly beautiful perfection. They were not beautiful simply because of their shape, or because of the sights reflected in them, but because they had seen the beauty of summer skies and autumn trees, songs pouring like dust and gold from carefree car stereos, and the humanity of the world made obvious to him through its deepest pain and ugliest moments. His lips are perfect rose red, and their sensual fullness beckons me still, after so many silent and endless nights. I feel my own lips begin to burn as I remember their touch, and my fingers twitch as I resist the hopeless impulse to reach out into the twilight of otherwhere to pull him close, to hold him again.

"No," I say, forcing back the tears and looking away from the window hurriedly.

"He helped you with that?"

"He helped me with that."

She is quiet, and I watch her silently, her fingers fidgeting over each other, the nails chewed down to the quick and raw from winter cold.

"How can you ever forgive me?"

And the words are screams in a soundless room, crystal shattering in a place with no ground, and the tears in her eyes take my heart and rip it mercilessly in twain. They are whispered, but they are louder than thunder, and their phantoms hang in the air between us dangerously, making me shake. And I can't reach forward like I want to, I can't brush aside the darkness of her hair so that the tears in my own eyes can forgive her instead of incarcerate her. My body is rigid and she is unmoving, and I know she is as taut as electrical wire on a freezing day and I have to be so careful... so careful now.

"By realizing that you are already forgiven."

And by so doing I am acknowledging that I understand the true depths of her question, that I see into the closed room of her heart that holds up a mirror to her mind and shatters it over and over and over. And perhaps she can understand, too, that it was also a double-edged answer to a double-edged question. For how could I truly ever forgive what happened? How could I possibly forgive the loss of a being so perfect that just by breathing he made the world a holy place? It was possible that I would always remain angry and hurt. But the important thing was, that even as I thought such inevitable truths, I knew in my heart of hearts that I was no longer angry, and no longer hurt. How could I forgive that which stole the Angel away? Truly, by knowing it was already forgiven. Even at the last, he was teaching me his truth. He was the truth, the light, and the way.

Just like he promised.

And she is looking at me, tears flowing freely now, and as she shrinks into the embracing fold of the hospital pillow, I am finally able to stand and I move to her bed as a sob bearing lonely train tracks and wind down gray streets chokes out of her slender, battered frame. And she shakes with a thousand unreleased tears as she crawls into my lap, her legs drawn up to her chest and her arms wrapping around me in a grip that sends shards of mirror-glass through my skin. Her sobs heave against the soft leather of my coat, and my chest absorbs the sound as I bend my head over hers, holding her close. And as she rocks back and forth, keening her grief in a shifting, primal wail, I whisper formless, soothing words into her ears, entangling a hand in her hair and feeling her tears soak the front of my shirt. She is sobbing the word `no' over and over again as I press helpless, dizzy kisses to her forehead, my own tears dripping from my eyes to mingle with hers on a landscape of flesh and broken fear.

And I begin to speak softly, voice made thick with tears, continuing the story. After a time, her sobs becoming tiny, hitching gulps, and eventually sodden silence, but she makes no move to leave my arms. And I hold her as tight as she'll let me as I fall back into the boundless realm of memory, attempting to take her with me so that I won't fall in too fast, too far, too strong. Clutching her bony frame as the ocean whispers at me, she is a physical reminder of where I truly am, and I hold her as close as I can.

frost the stealthy slayer pale betrayer something softened by its pleading, kills it not but leaves it bleeding

It was no use, I thought to myself, as I found myself staring - while still unsuccessfully trying not to - at the bowed head of the red-haired girl several seats down from me in English Lit. It had been more than a week since she had made her first appearance in turning over my world, and it was becoming readily apparent that it was no use in trying to figure the whole insane, unsettling situation out. She was making me crazy, and in no small amounts. I had, after some time, cautiously come to the decision that it wasn't just the additives of drug molecules in my brain creating the otherworldly, eerie feelings that she gave me every time I saw her and every time I didn't. While I couldn't conclusively say for certain that it wasn't the product of a dangerously overworked and over-abused mind, I knew that it intensified to fever pitch when she was around and left me drained and dazed when she wasn't. And when she was around, I felt clear and lucid to heights that I had never before experienced, and for those moments I knew that the visions and the painful hyperawareness constantly assailing me were significant and meant something. There was something that I was supposed to understand, I felt, and while my whole being, mind and body, struggled towards that frustratingly elusive end, I became awash in her presence and ghost of a hauntingly higher perception.

I found myself mesmerized by the red and golden highlights in her hair more than any other aspect. It was like watching a firepit – you could stare for hours without thinking... simply frozen in time. I had memorized the way it fell from her head and lay about her shoulders; a glittering explosion of sunrise light and copper softness. The way it framed her face was most astonishing in its beauty, but again, as maddeningly always, I had the irritating feeling that it was missing something. I had heard her voice only a handful of times, when Professor Richler would call upon her to answer a question. She would answer it clearly and concisely, and mine wasn't the only head that turned at her lilting tones. She had been attracting a lot of attention in the class, but seemed oblivious to it all. Half the guys spent their time nervously flicking their gazes from Professor Richler to her and back again, always looking blank when they rested on the professor and always hungry when they invariably swung back to her. I wondered vaguely if I looked like that, and tried to keep my gaze away. But always her slightest movement would bring me back, and I started to hate myself for the almost Pavlovian response my mind was having.

I still didn't know her name.

Professor Richler had the odd, irritating refusal to acknowledge anyone's name. He addressed us by our seat numbers, and nothing else. I was a special case; he seemed to revel in bawling my name out across the auditorium when it most looked like I wasn't paying attention, and it was something of a joke among my fellow classmates. I'd get called `Frost' on the campus, and it was most often bewilderingly done by people I had never even seen before. But somehow they'd all managed to perfect Richler's nasal, scratchy tones, and it would catch me unawares most days, making me jump. I guess it was something of a treat for the idiots; it was the only time I would ever register any of them. I had somewhat of an asshole reputation on the campus, and I welcomed it with open arms. It seemed that dressing in black, wearing eyeliner and having an unbiased hatred of everything made people avoid me, and what could be better?

"Move it, people."

I looked up quickly as the professor's words interrupted my stream of thought. Glancing around, I saw with considerable alarm that everyone was getting up slowly with their books cradled in their arms and looking apprehensively around the room. Staring uncomprehendingly, I watched as a few from the fashion section trailed over to the computer geeks and stiffly sat down next to them. Then it dawned on me, and I groaned. Group projects. Great. Just great. I hated this shit.

I sat there silently, watching, expecting as usual for the professor to wait `til the end and force me to join a group of two and make them exceedingly uncomfortable for the next two weeks. No-one ever came near me, and I echoed the sentiment, so it was general hell all around as I readied myself for more mediocrity. As a curiosity, I let my gaze slip over to the girl, wondering where she would find herself. But as I looked, I saw her seat empty, and I raised an eyebrow as I looked around for her. I almost jumped out of my skin as suddenly, out of nowhere, my peripheral vision was filled with a vision of pale ice and crimson glitter. There she was, sitting right next to me, and looking at me with a questioning, almost cynical smile on her rosy lips. I was made aware with an intensity that was almost vertigo in its power, of her scent, and it smelled like trees, windswept ruins, cedar smudge... Distant songs on forgotten memory and I felt sick to my stomach as I stared at her, almost feeling my eyes on fire.

Her smile slowly became fixed as we stared at each other, and through the almost imperceptible widening of her eyes, I was again privy to the eerie, almost siren-like wildness of her irises. They glittered with a perilous perfection, and my head was an empty space laid bare to the touch and all my secrets were so much urn dust on the wind. The room was noisy with the sound of people talking as they found their seats, but the silence between us was almost staggering. I could feel it like a wall encircling us, invisible and as impregnable as thought itself. It set my skin shivering, and I could feel the hairs on my arms raising slowly as my breath stopped completely. How could no-one see this, I heard myself wondering as distantly and quietly as though that part of myself was a thousand leagues down. The world was still revolving, but mine was on total pause.

And she kept her gaze.

"Hi," I heard myself croak, and my fingers were white on the edge of my desk. Jesus...

She stared for a moment longer, and then the crook of her lips took on a deeper dip and her teeth sparkled bright at me from behind their rose shields.

"Hi. You're Evan, right?"

Her voice, oh, her voice. It was going to undo me, I thought dizzily, and nodded.

"Yeah. That's right." Smooth. I had the skill of a gorilla behind a jeweller's bench. Great...

I'd never heard a voice like it before. So soft, like music drifting on incense and starlight out of a midnight wood. And yet, again... it wasn't quite right... there was a power missing, and my ears strained to hear it so deeply that a wrench of pain shot across my forehead.

"You got a partner yet?"

I was stuck, staring at her eyes. A partner? For what? Christ, I needed to start paying attention...

"Um... no..."

"Would you oblige me, then?"

Would I oblige her? She would be the one obliging me. Perhaps, if we worked closer to each other, I would be able to sort this whole crazy confusion out. But then again, I thought, as I took a second, deeper look into her eyes and felt my palms begin to sweat, maybe it wasn't such a good idea. For her presence wasn't a exactly calming one, and I still felt full of riddles even with the answers so close.

But, never mind, I thought, as my mind reeled and lurched, my hands gripping ever tighter on the desk. Better to work with her than ignore the miffed looks of whatever other terrible group I was going to be forced to sit with. At least she was new here. My reputation might not have gotten the better of me yet.

"Of course," I heard myself say, my voice somehow contriving to sound a lot more relaxed than I felt. And with that, she gave me an easy smile, putting her notebook on the table in front of her, a plain blue pen lying on the blank surface page. With a grace that was ungainly and fluid at the same time, she lifted her legs up to rest on the back of the chair in front of her, and turned to face me. I noticed her pants: burgundy couyderoys that had a flare leg over her black Doc Martens. She had long legs, and nice ones too, from what I could tell. Her hair sparkled auburn and gold as it slipped off her leather-clad shoulders, and the northern ice of her eyes were paralyzing as she, it felt, stared me down.

"So who do you think we should pick?"

It was like being asked a question in a foreign language. I heard the words, and the loveliness behind them, but I just didn't have a clue what she was talking about. Again, I felt drugged, and I stared at her stupidly as I fumbled for some sense of normalcy as gravity switched its laws.

"Uh... I... "

Better go for honesty here, I thought belatedly, as a slender red brow curved up in questioning.

"...wasn't really paying attention."

She looked at me a moment longer, and then grinned; a full, startling smile that transformed her face from a warrior queen's statuesque beauty into a living, breathing girl. I blinked.

"I know. You seem tranced out a lot in this class. Are you taking it as a filler course?"

For the first time in years, I suddenly had to fight down the incredible, terrible urge to blush. Instead I looked away as I murmured my response, staring without seeing at the back of a computer geek's head while I wished I were anywhere else. She had been watching me.

"Well, not exactly. This is my major."

Her little suppressed titter made the blush even more furious, and I tried not to picture her eyes as she stared at my bowed head. She was quiet for a moment before she said, with surprising gentleness:

"Maybe you need to change your major."

I looked up at her quickly before dropping my gaze again; her eyes were intent on me and giving me the appalling, intense feeling of being in some sort of reality-altering ice blue spotlight.

"Maybe," I muttered after a painful moment through which her comment sat there like a telling stone between us.

And then she was laughing softly, and I couldn't help but look out through my hair at her—it often fell in my face due to the layered lengths that I wore it in-- and smile a crooked, shy smile. She held my gaze for what felt like a full minute, and I got the distinct impression that I was again being read as clearly as though I were made of glass but this time it wasn't awful. Her eyes burned blue and silver, and they seemed to shoot through mine and down my spine with a fierceness that made me shiver and raised the tiny hairs on my back. And when she looked down at her notebook and started flipping through the pages, her smile was still on her rose-coloured lips and I felt –bizarrely—okay at being laughed at. Yeah, maybe I needed to change my major. Or maybe I just needed an explanation of who – or what – she was.

"Here," she said, interrupting my thoughts as I stared at her. And she was shifting closer to me, pulling her notebook with her and pointing with a long, elegant finger at the page it was now opened to. Her fingernail was bare of any polish, but it looked like something out of a skin cream commercial, it was so perfect. Her closeness was electric. Suddenly I was filled with the crazy idea that her body warmth was an actual shield around her body that I could feel and touch, and my left arm began to tingle and burn as though it were too close to a fire. Blinking rapidly, I tried to concentrate on the page she was showing me, but all I could register was the solidity of her arm, the softness of the curve of her elbow. Her hair too, was dangerously close to my exposed forearm, and I could smell its exotic, subtle scent as I stared uncomprehendingly at her careful, uniform writing.

"So those are all the authors. Have you ever read any of them? Most of them look American to me and I haven't read much American work other than the classics."

I scanned the list slowly, still unsure of why we were looking at them, and the only name that leaped out at me was Michael Cunningham.

"Him," I said, pointing to the name. "He wrote The Hours, which won the Pulitzer, as well as Home At The End Of The World, and Flesh and Blood. The first two were made into movies."

"Good," she said decisively; I still didn't dare attempt to look at her. "It will make it easier for me to see the movies as well, I'm no great shakes at interpreting books."

"I see," I lied.

There was a silence, and I could tell she was looking at me. I fumbled with my binder and uselessly turned to a fresh page, even though the one I was on before had been blank. Grabbing my pen, I took the lid off of the end of it and placed it over the point. Realizing after what I'd done, I hurriedly rectified the mistake and furiously fought the desire to sink onto the floor. How was it possible that she was making me feel so self-conscious? That aspect alone was enough to thoroughly weird me out, never mind the fact that I didn't seem to mind, either.

And then:

"You have no idea what we're doing, do you?"

"Not really," I said weakly, feeling like a moron. There was no escaping the blush now, as it crawled up my cheeks and ripped across my forehead. I still didn't know her name.

"What is it you do in this class, then?"

Stare at you and wonder who you're supposed to be and why you make me feel as though my life is about to turn upside down.

"Not much," I said instead. God this conversation was doing wonders. I was surprised she hadn't got up and left yet.

"Like everyone else, I guess. But you don't deceive me, I know you get the best marks in the class." Her voice was quiet, shrewd. I glanced at her.

Not anymore, I thought to myself, and a vision of John standing at the sink with bird fingers holding a too thin glass and glasses glittering with hurt shot through me. I blinked, and looked down again.

"Once and a while. So what are we doing?" I asked, in a too-loud voice that carried through the room and made a few heads look up but completely and utterly failed to remove John's face from my vision. Another image of the pencil I broke upon first meeting her flashed through my mind, and I frowned inwardly. The two, John's face and the broken pencil seemed to merge somehow; creating a disturbing and nagging symbiance. As the echoes of the wood and graphite snapping collided with the soft snick of the door closing on John's injured face, I shuddered as though an electric current had just run through me and struggled into a better sitting position, feeling my stomach beginning to spin.

I couldn't eradicate the feeling of being transparent as the girl looked at me, and the closeness of her arm was still too potent for comfort. Still, she lay her pen on the page, obscuring the words written there and began to explain. I sat there silently, listening to her voice and trying to concentrate on the meaning of the words, not just the meaning of her voice.

"We have to take a chapter out of two of their books, and combine them effectively enough to create a whole new plot divergence, while still keeping true to both novels."

"So essentially we have to prove that the personality of the author prevails through everything they write, and no story is ever a new one. They are all children of the same maker and of the same thread. Literary mathematics can be applied here to show that once you know an author's equation, you know every possible outcome."

I spoke without thinking, as usual, and it was only her utter silence that made me look up. She was staring at me unabashedly, and it threatened to make me flush again as the brilliance of her eyes surveyed me with an almost impressed air.

"And how do you know that?"

I shrugged defensively, and cast my eyes downward again, letting my jet black hair fall over my vision as I quickly wrote out the day's date on the upper right hand side of my new blank page.

"It makes sense."

She lifted a hand to comb through her hair; I was very aware of her scent as if wafted off her moving arm and danced through the air. She laughed a little, and I glanced at her again.

"Not to me, it didn't. I guess that's why you sleep in this class. You can afford to. Maybe you don't need to change your major, after all."

"I don't sleep," I muttered. "I just know Professor Richler's style. He loves off the dogma of science found in art."

She was quiet as I wrote down the author's name and the titles of the books, and it was a short while after I'd begun to sort through his chapters in my mind in search of two that would most likely merge best, that she spoke again. The Hours and Home At The End Of The World seemed to be the best candidates to me, as they were both very concise novels with strong usage of what the professor liked best: fatalism. Both very different subjects, but always about the `little things' that shape our days and ultimately dictate the future. Cunningham used the smallest events to convey plot foreshadowing and often favoured analogy to describe the most important aspects of his intention. And as I was trying to decide which of his characters would show off that unfailing similarity best, her voice cut through my thoughts and slashed them to frayed and forgotten lace.

"My name is Teryl Rowan."

I felt as though an invisible hand had whipped through the air and landed a solid, agonizing punch to my stomach. Rowan.

Rowan.

And then, the world exploded inside my head.

A thousand images all at once, with the fury of a million angels descending... I fought to keep up with them and understand as they slammed into my mind, merciless and blinding. The first was undoubtedly from the power of suggestion, or so I thought at the time. It was of a large, intimidating tree in the middle of a wooded expanse, its trunk made of a thousand microscopic pathways weft from time and mind-bending power. The leaves were a glorious shattering of autumn colour against the blackness of my mind, and I heard countless whispering voices hovering on the edge of perception as the tree seemed to breathe in once, deeply, and then out again. Dying in a moment of splendor I thought involuntarily as the vision disappeared as quickly as it had come and a hundred other ones came to take its place. All of them were impossible, all of them confusing, and I forgot most of them even as they arrived. A house, old and watchful... violin music on a dangerous night... snowflakes falling from a clear, otherworldly sky... my own face reflected in a pool of starlight, ravaged with despair and eyes made bright with desire... I knew the meaning of none of them and they left no sign of their passing. But it was like a droplet of water falling into a pool; the ripple was made and its mark was left, imperceptible after a moment and impossible to tell from the rest, but the pool was made undeniably larger and more complete as the fading ripples slipped to the edges.

I managed to catch one as it slipped on past me, and I reeled in confusion as it burned itself onto my quaking memory. A woven crown of tiny white flowers lay on grass as green as the dreams of forests, the vines and petals trembling as though they had fallen from a great height. It was a beautiful thing, made from frailty and strength at the same time, and I felt my mind shriek with terror as it suddenly, but as slowly as though all of eternity were watching, burst into flame. The flames were orange and gold, and they licked at the flowers hungrily until they went from purest white to darkest black in an instant that ripped my breath from my lungs. And then, just as quickly, the flowers turned to dust and the fire receded into a nothingness that displayed only the dark gray funeral ash on the emerald green pyre. The sight, although strange, seemed not unfamiliar as my heart seemed to tear. And although I had no frame of reference, the vision saddened me beyond my ability to bear and I turned from it blindly. The ash stayed in my mind and I heard the tears of the grass as they bore it for all to see, their slender backs breaking under the light, but so terribly heavy load. I wanted to weep.

But before I could, something else exploded in front of me, erasing the vision of the wreath and leaving me mute. It was the last vision, and the strongest, and I felt my mouth go dry and my face pale as I stared sightlessly at the enormity before me. This is the end of everything you have ever known this is the end of everything you have ever known this is the end this is the end you have known you have known sounded over and over and over in my mind as I watched the cloaked person in the middle of the woods I knew I had seen before kneel before a wild, wooden altar. It was made of an assortment of twigs and longer branches that had been woven together to create a untamed, beautiful pedestal for the items placed on it: two candles, a bowl containing a burning, fragrant substance, and a piece of smoothest, darkest silk. The person, shrouded in the whitest of white cloaks, was hidden from me as they knelt, upon one knee, before the offering. I was seeing their back, and the sound in my ears was that of a thousand crystal bells ringing on shores of gold and mithril; the sound of diamonds and glory made flesh. The hood of the cloak was lowered with hands as white and radiant as the farthest star, and my heart ached as I burned to hold them, and I knew heartbreak then and there as the hands were lowered out of my sight to touch the altar. My face felt wet with tears, and I felt that they surely must be red with blood as my heart pumped wildly and painfully against the evil restraint of my body as I stared at the Angel.

For he was an angel. I could see the wings now, invisible, on the air. They glittered at me like the edges of broken glass, and the sound they made as they moved with their bearer was like music of the Northern Lights, put on pause and extended forever. They were huge, larger than the sky and earth together, and yet in perfect keeping with the host. They seemed to draw the light from the stars, and I knew the beginning and ending of the world as I fell before them. And then a burst of radiance made me look down from their sparkling tips and I saw the hair of the Angel.

And it was red.

But not like any red I had ever seen in any of my days. Not even on the girl. Not like copper, not like gold. Surely, it had those tones mixed into it, but this was a deeper red, a darker red, a more perfect red. This was the red of the Elder Days, when colour was first born and alive with joy. This was redder than blood, more powerful than flame. And it flowed down the Angel's back with a strident gladness that could not be contained, and my soul seemed to weep with joy as I stared. It was like a crimson waterfall arrested in glittering motion, and I desired more than anything to know its scent and cool, annihilating touch on my burning, cracked lips. I was in love, I knew then, but it did not surprise me, for who could not fall victim to a godly beauty like that? But then, as I stared, a ferral, emblazoned thing, the Angel stood and was swept away with a swiftness that came as a physical blow. The movement was so etheral, so graceful, that it instantly shattered any preconceived idea I had ever had about grace and made me surrender myself to it, mind, body and soul. And then the Angel was gone and wood was dark, except for a glowing thing on the silk laid on the altar. And in one last, omnipotent moment, I was pushed towards the altar for a quick glance as the vision began to tear itself away and I felt the world returning.

On the black silk, glittering as darkly as the most perfect night, was a shining emblem that threatened to blind me with its radiance. It lay innocuously on the silk as though it had been there forever and would patiently remain so, but it had the touch of the Angel about its countenance and even the metal it was wrought from seemed more alive and more holy than any I'd seen. Threaded on a cord that I knew was made to lie about a throat, was a sigil I had seen before but could not place when. I stared at it desperately, hungrily, and when I reached out a hand for a chance to but graze the object I knew had been within the Angel's perfect grasp, the vision switched off and I was left, gasping, staring at the page in the notebook I'd been writing in. The classroom came back, and with it came my body, which felt empty and heavy at the same time, making my skin crawl. The stale air of the building assailed my senses, and in a shock of desperation I gripped at the sides of my desk again, feeling my vision swim.

"Jesus, are you okay?" The girl asked – Teryl – and her hand was on my forearm, gripping it steadily. I had the instinct to jump away from her as I felt her hand approach, but she was too quick for me as another wave of nausea swept through me. But any fears I had of her invoking any more disturbing images were allayed as her hand seemed to have a grounding effect and I felt it more than the desk I was hanging onto for dear life or the breaths I was drawing shakily into my unresponsive lungs. It was several moments before I was able to look up at her, and her ice blue eyes were made softer by concern, yet sharper by a larger, more nameless thing that watched me unfathomably. And her hair was red, but I knew now, not the perfect red, and although this didn't answer any questions, I had the distinct and unshakable impression that I had been right all along: she was a foreshadower of something, or someone, to come. The last vision stayed in my mind's eye, threatening to superimpose reality with its wild, impossible beauty, and I fought to control my heart as she waited for a response.

I had seen an angel. How could she have shown me an angel? And not just any angel. The Angel.

Cocaine, ran through my head, but I dismissed it as I looked once more into the impossibility of her eyes and knew the fantastic.

"Nice to meet you, Teryl," I croaked. "I'm fine. I have low blood pressure, and I didn't eat this morning." A fine lie, and almost a believable one. I knew she didn't believe it as she stared at me, and something told me that the fact that she didn't believe me was even more proof that what I'd been feeling for the past two weeks and the visions I had just seen were real. Now to try and understand them...

Rowan.

God help me.

It had been the cross caught within the circle that I had seen. The talisman that the Angel had left for me to see on the altar had been that symbol. I had seen it before; but where? And why did it provoke such strong feeling in my heart as I thought of it? It was like a stigmatic to doubting Christian; I could feel my heart yearning to believe as it stared at the key to all knowledge and infallible truth. And it was then that I lost my fear. She had been scaring me for the past two weeks; I had been a mess of confusion and fright as vision after vision and awareness after awareness had come ripping, like lightning across a black sky, into my head. She had been driving me crazy and that in itself was pushing me further over the edge. But no longer. For the Angel rose like a pillar of white light in my mind, and I knew glory and sadness both at the sight. The beauty of the vision had moved me past my fear, and I yearned to speak to her of it, to demand a reason for the terrifying and impossibly beautiful things her presence created.

But instead I bowed my head and gestured to the page, her fingers still warm and real on my arm. She gently moved them across my skin as I began to speak. It was a gentle caress, and not one I would previously have been inclined to allow to continue, much less happen at all, but this was careful and familiar, almost like the touch of a long-time friend or mother. I was a million miles away as I began to explain the characters and chapters in Michael Cunningham's books that I felt were relevant to the assignment. The whole time she was quiet and receptive beside me, and after a time she took her hand away to write down some of the ideas. But it was well into the small hours of the next morning when I would fall asleep with the red-haired vision of the white-cloaked Angel, and even then the ghost of her hand would still be burning on my arm, as though she were still there, keeping me steady.

our love is like water been down and abused for being strange our love is no-other than me alone

• live

I look down at her as she sits in my arms, her head still resting against my chest. She had been silent throughout the latest part of the telling; not even her breathing had distracted me as I looked with far away eyes out of the window and to the falling, gentle snow. Her eyes are closed, I can see, and the dark fringe of her eyelashes smudge against her pale skin as she begins to open them. I rest my cheek against the top of her head, feeling a little weary now, and she moves her arms from about my chest to rest in between her torso and legs as she shifts even closer. Her body is frail and light, but I hold it tightly, for I know she is made of stronger stuff that she looks, and she knows it too. Only seventeen and full of demons; how could she know her most beautiful moment was here, with me, right now, in the middle of all this pain?

"Are you a witch?"

I lift my head a little to look down at her better, and the seriousness of her face outweighs the childlike question. I look into her dark, yielding eyes, and smile gently.

"No. I am not a witch. Far from it, in fact."

"Then was she? Is she, I mean?"

"No. He wasn't, either."

Her expression is troubled, but I do not offer anymore information, knowing without asking that if she desires something explained, she will come to it on her own terms. It was all or nothing with this tiny child in my arms, and I respected that.

"Then how was it possible? How could you see all those things, and how could she have made you feel so weird without being something like that?"

"Tell me," I ask, and she looks up at me, blinking as the edges of my hair fall into her eyes. "Do you believe in such things? Witchcraft, I mean?"

She is silent for a while. I hold her close as I shift on the seat and I stand up, moving towards the bed. The chair being uncomfortable, the bed was softer and more inviting as I sat on it, leaning my back up against her pillow. She rearranged herself on my lap without seeming to pause in her perusal of my question, and I retrieved the blanket from the bottom of the bed and drew it over her. My eyes were weary with pain and grief, but I kept them open for her as I listened to her breathe and felt her tiny but steady heartbeat thudding gently inches from mine.

"No," she answers slowly. "but I believe in magic."

"You do?" I ask, surprised.

And then she is looking up at me, all dark eyes and wild heart, and she seals herself fast in my soul with her next words that carry me past my exhaustion and anguish and land me alive, in the world, broken yes, but not gone.

"Yes, I do. I wouldn't be here without it, and you wouldn't be here showing me that."

Oh, Ashen, I scream in my heart, for it is almost too much to bear, and I want to beg for him to come back and take me away from all of this; this wretched world without him and this tiny, heartbroken child before me lost in this painfully beautiful moment. But she is looking at me with those shadowy eyes so wide and filling with hesitant, burgeoning trust that I don't beg, and I am silent, knowing his answer without hearing it.

"Then that is all you need to know. Neither of them were witches, and any strangeness I can attest to came from solely that: magic. Magic without craft. They were above that kind of belief. Any abilities he had, came straight from his own heart. Do you understand?"

She looks at me a while longer, and I endure her probing gaze patiently. I can see that this she doesn't understand, much like myself when I first encountered the experience that was Ashen. But as with me, time would temper all misconceptions. Perhaps this would be the only true story of purity she would ever hear. I know that he was the only truth I would ever purely see, and that as selfish a person that I was, I couldn't possibly be the only one to know of it. In a world so wretched and full of hate, I owed his memory at least that much to speak of his goodness to this razor-scarred child of broken dreams.

She lays her head on my shoulder again, and her body melts on top of mine as she rests. It should have been uncomfortable, this narrow bed. It should have been weird, this almost perfect stranger huddled in my arms in the middle of a hospital wing. But it wasn't, and it wouldn't be, and I was able to breathe as I slowly gathered up the courage to start speaking again, holding her close as though he himself were with me and listening to my tears.

"I know this isn't easy for you," she says softly, and her hand is moving to find mine under the blanket. When she locates it, her tiny spider fingers slip fast in between mine and she clutches them close for a minute before relaxing. "You don't have to do it."

I smile to myself silently, but it is not a smile that is particularly mirthful. It is sad, and slow, but she doesn't see it as I squeeze her hand back, gently.

"Yes, I do," I say, and visions of his shadow slipping smooth and velvet over streetlamp-kissed sidewalks sparkles in my mind's eye. My body twitches, and she hugs me closer.

"Why?"

Why? Oh, why indeed? There were so many reasons. Some were not quite clear, others painfully so. Some were selfish: I needed to talk about him, if only once, if only this night, if only to her. I needed to remember him before I left the dream forever, before the knowledge of his loss became estranged and impossible to me. Before the scent of his skin left the coldness of my bed, and before the first layer of dust fell on his silent violin, I needed to remember him. Before the soil settled too heavily, too concretely, too finally, on his casket, I needed to breathe him in one more time.

Before my heart broke forever, I needed to burn beside him.

"You'll see," I say to her as gently as I can, not quite sure if the tremor in my voice is audible enough for her to hear. I stay as still as I can as unbidden tears begin to trail out of the corner of my eyes, and I let them drip into the neck of my coat, as cold as ice, as she waits for me to continue. I can't let her see me crying like this, not yet, not until she is able to forgive it. So I wait for them to pass as I begin to speak again, breathing him in, burning beside him.

The night was warm. The trees were tall and quiet; any whispers they spoke of, they kept to themselves as I walked through their midst. The soft susurration of leaves upon windswept air was the only sound I heard as I stepped through the darkness, not even my slow, hesitant footfall made a sound in this watchful place. I could smell the scent of earth all around me like a mist, swirling softly, catching traces of cedar wood and pine that swept about me in a breeze softer than still water and as maddeningly invisible as spider webs. The air felt charged, but in a dormant, waiting sort of way, and I treaded all the more carefully as I passed under the silent, swaying limbs of the trees above my head.

I came to a turn on the tiny, almost invisible path I was following, and I looked ahead into complete darkness. Even though I didn't recognize the landmarks, I knew I'd been there before, and somehow knew what lay ahead. A wildness of anticipation rose in me like a blood red whirlwind, and I felt my breathing come quicker as I stared, hypnotized, into the waiting dark. The night sky was dark and vast above me, the stars glittering piercing and silver in between the voiceless chattering of the leaves. The earth, the sky's heavy and corporeal twin, lay wild and untamed before me, and my legs felt like stone and bark as they stood attached to the path that twisted into the softly expectant dark.

The excitement that burned in my chest and extended out to my hands and fingers like tendrils of white-hot fire threatened to consume me as I stood there, motionless, on the path. I could feel myself shaking with a nameless power as my eyes persued the path before me; I could feel my irises burning with a strange, untamed light as my heart raged ceaselessly in my chest. I felt as light as silk and as heavy as stone, and the very cells of my body seemed to be pulling themselves towards that hidden, but inevitable, end. The shaking increased until an uncontrollable shiver began to command my body, and I felt the wetness of tears searing my cheeks as I began to step forward. I could feel the fire burning in my chest, becoming tighter and harder with each too-slow step. My mouth wouldn't open, but the scream of purest desire ricocheted around my chest with an animal ferocity, and my fingers were as taut as steel as the scream, desire, and anticipation ripped through my body like lightning and out of their trembling tips.

And as I moved into the shadow, I could almost make out the clearing ahead, and my vision was dizzy with longing. My mouth was dry and my lungs burned, and I began to run as a white light filled all the air around me, turning the trees to crystal and my resistance to so much shattered glass. The light was blinding; a burnt white scorch of brightest effervescence, but it poured in through my skin and arrested my heart as my eyes blistered from the inside and I could see no more. I still kept running blindly towards the clearing as siren song filled my ears and my tears and my wordless cry of need exploded into the light –

"Evan!! Wake up!!"

I screamed.

Jolting upright, my scream reverberated through the darkness with a piercing cry that sent needles through my skin. For one terrible moment I didn't know where I was, and the awful blackness that surrounded me after that mind-bending possession of light was like getting a knife into the back and twisted. I could still see it, in my mind, and my wordless gasps were prayers of terror as I groped vainly to find my way back to it. My arms flailed through the air as I screamed again, and I heard myself moaning as I felt the trees and the silence and the holy, perfect presence at the end of the path escape my desperation once more. It was like being held under water with the vision of the sunlight sparkling mere tortuous inches away, the wind whipping the tops of the waves like so much freedom on a summer's day. My heart twisted and turned as a grief completely alien to me encroached on me like a shadow darker than night, and it was a grief so undeniable in its strength that I crumpled before it like a child.

"No no no no no," I was whimpering, feeling gut wrenching sobs rising out of the darkness to rip their claws into my shaking frame. My eyes were dry as the sorrow howled through me; this was a agony far beyond physical tears. But then, before I could lose myself to it, hands were on my arms, pinning them down to my sides, and a violent shaking rattled my vision until the room came into sight. And when the mist cleared from my eyes and the wildness of my heart receded enough that I could see, John came blurrily into focus, his eyes wide with fear and his voice high-pitched and scratchy in the dark.

"Evan... Evan... for fuck's sake... wake the fuck up... you're late..."

I struggled to raise my arms from my sides, but the hindrance of what I eventually discovered was bedsheets made this no easy task. He had pinned my arms down with my bedsheets. Still half crazed by what I had seen, I shook with terror and another screaming thing that filled me up like a thousand knives and threatened to render me dumb. But John's face was inches from my own, and the worried light in his magnified gaze calmed me down enough to understand what was going on and I stopped trying to shove his iron grip aside.

"It's okay, it's okay," I managed to gasp, and with one giant lunge, I pushed him off me and ripped the sheets aside. Desperately reaching for breath, I knelt there on the bed in the light of the open door and tried to calm my racing heart. My mind reeled in confusion and fear; what had just happened? Why was it so powerful? Why did it feel like my heart was crying? When I looked up again, John was leaning against the wall, looking just as winded as I felt and his eyes were wide and terrified. His hair glittered a pale gold in the light and it hurt my eyes as I stared dazedly up at him. Falling back on the bed with a thud, I lay there with my hands over my chest, seriously wondering if my heart was about to go into cardiac arrest. The world was a daze all around me; the room was a spinning mess of nausea and the bed felt like it was docked at sea. But above all of it and far away, like churchbells on a winter morning, was the vision of the light, and my heart gave another reeling lurch as the dream came back to me.

What the hell is WRONG with me?! I wanted to scream, as fear and debilitating confusion rode through me. It was too fucked up to bear, all of it, and I shuddered as I lay there, trying not to think. Teryl giving me visions, messing with my whole perception, and now dreams that felt more real than anything I'd ever done in life before and made me want to die when they were over?

"Evan...?"

John's voice was a squeak of trepidation, and it brought me back down, away from the whirling black lightning in my head that threatened to short me out. One thing at a time. Just deal with this, and breathe.

Just breathe.

"It's okay. I'm okay," I said faintly, and struggled to a sitting position. He stepped forward to help me up, and his slender hand was as strong as a sapling as it wrapped around mine. I gripped it tightly for a second, all that I would allow myself to do, before letting it gently go. Pain knocked around in my head like a spike-covered mace, and I winced as the light from the living room lanced across my eyes. I knew his hand was still there, hovering where I'd left it, and I wanted to do so much more than just get up and step away. I could feel his love and fear and concern pouring out of his fingertips and into the air, I knew his eyes glittered with almost-tears that he would never admit were there and so I didn't have to. I knew how it must have looked and I wanted to apologize; the scream still shrieked along the walls like a blade across ice, still echoed in his pale blue eyes as he watched me closely.

But, hating myself, I got up and stepped away.

"What the hell was that?" he said after a moment, his voice quieter now but no less relaxed.

The clock in the living room that I could see through the ajar door read 7: 30. I should have been at study hall a half-hour ago. I staggered to the closet and reached in for the last clean pair of black jeans draped over a hanger, and the sound of the hanger swinging back and forth against the back wall of the closet was the only sound as I undid the pants and stepped into them. I usually slept in my boxers and nothing else, but as he was in the room I didn't have the luxury of changing them from the night's sleep as he stared me down. So I pulled them up over my hips and focused on doing up the zipper as my mind raced for some kind of answer that wouldn't instantly set him on the warpath.

"A dream," I settled for lamely, and winced inwardly as this was received with cold, unimpressed silence.

"That was kind of obvious."

I tried not to roll my eyes as I looked around for a shirt, still feeling unsteady and surreal as ghosts of the dream whispered at me tantalizingly from the dark corners of the room. Spotting a discarded, doubtfully clean, black shirt on the back of my chair, I picked it up and shrugged into it hurriedly, watching John come back into view as the collar settled around my neck. Raking my fingers through my hair and feeling it fall in tousled layers around my face, I picked up the backpack by his feet and began to ram the clutter of books on the floor into its ragged maw haphazardly as I stepped into my boots.

"I don't know," I said, feeling annoyance beginning to trickle down my back like cold sweat. "Just some nightmare. I don't remember what now."

And I knew he didn't believe me, who would? But it was all I was going to offer, and the silence in his eyes and his stance told me that he knew it. So he just stared at me with his shrewd, sharp gaze and I reeled from it like a gun barrel in my face. Not bothering to lace up my boots, I stepped past him while grabbing my coat from the hook on the back of the door and walked into the living room. Struggling into the coat, I slipped the backpack onto my shoulders as I crossed the room in three steps and lay a hand on the front doorknob.

"Come on," I said to him, or rather, the darkness of my room which still housed his silent frame. "Lets go."

I closed my eyes as I waited to hear him move: was he staring at my bed and at the tangle of sheets that still held sleeping warmth and the key to my dreams? Did he think he could read, like music notes, the nuances of the pillows and blankets that would spell out the silence in between us? I almost half wished he could.

But then he emerged from the room, eyes cast down and his gait measured and silent. He picked up his jacket from where it lay on the couch and wrapped it around his chest as he approached. I swallowed the lump in my throat and closed my eyes against the maelstrom in my head as I pushed down on the door handle and held it open for him. He slipped past me without a word, and I let the door slam shut as I fumbled for my key. By the time I got it locked, he was already at the entrance to the dorms and holding the door for me silently. I nodded my thanks and stepped outside, where the coldness of the morning swept the breath right out of my mouth. He fell in step beside me and we began to walk, my eyes smarting from the cold and the twin fogs from our breath rising on the air where they mingled high above us.

The leaves were whirling all around us, and I tried not to think of midnight leaves and watchful trees as I walked beside John. My heart was still pounding in my chest, and if I closed my eyes long enough I could still smell the cedar and see the shape of the light in the darkness. Feeling the taste of parched sleep on my tongue, I made a face and dug in my coat pocket for my cigarettes, fumbling inexpertly with the box once I drew it out. The cold was making my fingers numb and I had to stop walking as I tried to force the lid open with shaking, tired fingers. John stopped a few feet after I did, and he walked back to me slowly as I used shaking fingers to withdraw a cigarette. He watched me almost manage to draw one out before dropping it back in again, and he heard me curse as I reached for another one.

But then, slender hands with nails bitten down to the quick reached out and covered my own, taking the box from me in a fluid motion that made me stop what I was doing. I watched as he took a slender, white papered stick out of the box, and then he held it in his palm as he shook the box for the book of matches lying in there. I took the hidden opportunity to look up into his face; his eyes were downcast and focused on retrieving the cigarette for me and I had one fleeting, perfect moment to see his face close up as I hadn't been able to for months.

And the sight burned me.

The all too familiar features stood out in stark contrast with the dark day around him, and though they could not be called pretty by any stretch of the imagination, they took on a strange, sort of ethereal beauty as he stood before me. His hair lay thin and restlessly on his forehead, waving in the breeze that blew between us. It looked like it hadn't been washed in a while, which was strange because he was usually obsessive about those kind of things. My heart thumped. The wind whistling past my ears seemed to house the voice of those strands as they whipped in the current, and I found myself yearning to find out their scent and feel as he shook the matchbox into his hand. His glasses glittered cold and steel at me, the lenses distorting the part of his face they covered. But his eyelashes were snow and gold, and the darkness under his eyes wrenched at me because I knew it was new and if I had the spine I could probably trace it back to when I let it all fall apart. But the world was too strange now, and I felt an insanity I couldn't touch when I tried to breathe, so I had let everything fall apart and maybe the circles under his eyes were the punishment I would always have to pay for being the leper I always told him I was.

And then he was handing me the cigarette and box, and I took them dumbly as he ripped a match from the book and struck it against the strip on the back. As if in slow motion I raised the cigarette to my lips, and he shielded the burning flare of the matchstick in his hand against the wind as his hands and my face came together. The fire fluttered and flickered, but it didn't go out, and as the smoke began to rise blue and wild from the end of the cigarette, John and I stared into each others eyes. The clarity of the blueness shimmering at me from behind those coke-bottle lenses rendered me dumb, and I could feel my face beginning to crack as he gazed at me; all calm temperance and bottomless wells of silent hurt.

I wanted to fall to my knees. I wanted to cry out, hold him close and then push him away, I wanted to scream and scream until I couldn't scream anymore and then have him rip a knife across my throat. I wanted him to be angry, I wanted him to accuse me of all the things I'd ever done wrong, I wanted him to hold me up by my neck while he screamed all of his hurt and all of his anger at me, his fingers piercing my throat and making me bleed. I wanted him to demand me to speak, to break the silence with my rotten, broken words. I needed to burn, but not in this interminable, endless silence anymore.

But he stayed silent, and he was the one who broke the gaze as he shook out the burning match, and I was left staring at the top of his head as he turned away. He was already a few steps ahead of me when I finally convinced my feet to move to follow. When I caught up with him, smoke was in my mouth and my lungs seared with its heady toxins as I fought to clear my head.

"You shouldn't smoke those," he said as softly as a feather dropping as I took a huge, hungry drag off the cigarette and held it like hope in my mouth.

"I know," I said, my voice strained with the effort of holding the smoke in. "But I can't stand it when I don't brush my teeth. It's gross."

And truth be told, I really did hate it when that happened, but I was more smoking the cigarette not for its taste-desensitizing, but for the half-assed excuse of a high that the smoke gave me. It was a sickening, lurching sort of high, but a high nonetheless and a socially acceptable one that I could do out in public without fear of getting arrested. It wasn't a John-acceptable one by any means, and I knew that, but weighing the acceptability of snorting a line of coke off the back of my hand as opposed to taking a drag off a cigarette in front of him made the cigarette far more attractive.

But my hands were already shaking and my heart was still pumping, and I tried not to think about the feeling of the powder ripping up my nose and settling like icing sugar on the back of my tongue. John was silent after I'd said what I did, and we continued the walk in silence towards the English building. It lay on the east side of the campus, hidden in a copse of trees that shielded it from view. It was an old, dilapidated building, much like the rest of the structures on the campus. The university was spread over several parts of Toronto; we were located in the oldest part.

"Thanks for waking me up," I offered after a painful moment, where visions of him standing by the sink mingled with the matchstick flare until I had to speak to clear my mind of it.

"It's okay," he said quietly, and he slipped his raw-looking hands into his pockets as he glanced up at me.

"How long were you trying for?" I took another haul on the cigarette as his pale gaze was rainfall on a forgotten path.

"A few minutes. You didn't seem to hear me."

We walked on in silence for a few more minutes; I flicked the cigarette to the ground and ground it out in stride. Ramming my hands into my pockets, I hunched myself in against the wind and watched him for a while without saying anything. Our footsteps fell in time as they always did, and I found myself missing that familiarity as I watched him walk. We hadn't walked like this together since the beginning of the semester, and I savoured watching him as a bitter taste of defeat raised in my mouth. How could I be so damn careless, I wondered? How could everything get so strange, so imperfect? And why was I always to blame?

But there was no time to wonder that now.

It was out of that thought that I spoke, and my voice was suddenly husky and ill equipped for handling my usual harsh tones and the swiftness of his glance towards me and then away again told me that he'd heard it but wasn't –thankfully—going make light of it.

"It was just a dream, John."

His battered leather jacket seemed to expand as he looked at me, I became acutely aware of his tiny, underfed frame as the light from his eyes seeped like liquid mercury between us. I saw how the cuffs of the jacket –frayed and threadbare— hung like pillowcases over his ruler-thin wrists and I suddenly had the desperate urge to take his hands in mine and cover his fingers with apologies and tears. Anything to cover them, anything to shield them, but apologies and tears were the only things I had to offer anymore, so I looked instead back into his eyes, keeping my face carefully blank.

"If that's what you want, Evan."

The answer was almost enough to stop me in my tracks. My pace slowed for a half second as the calmly uttered, mercilessly hurtful acceptance fell from his chapped lips, and his eyes dropped from mine once more as I stared dumbly at him. What have I done? Never in a million years would John have let me end something like this in that way. He would have nagged and badgered me until I screamed whatever he wanted to know at him, and then, with his aggravating John-like brilliance, he would have presented a logical, systematic solution to the problem that would work no matter what. And it always did.

Funny how a million years can go by so soon.

It was doing us both a disservice to act the way I was, I knew that. And it only took the tiny, endlessly painful reminders from John to cement it in even further. Every day, I was conscious of throwing something huge and important away: I could see it slipping like a golden, glittering thing between my fingers into a dark, deathless sea. And it only took one of John's quiet, guarded remarks to rip me away from the hypnotism of watching the thing fall to actually remembering what it was and why I had held it dear in the first place. But I couldn't stop it, I couldn't speak out against it, because the truth was just too fetid and it had its hairline cracks everywhere I stepped. Better to live a lie with him than see him walk away from the blood-filled, empty-eyed truth without me.

Please forgive me.

My hands were shaking as all these thoughts ran through my head and I damned them all as my fingernails ground into my palms, digging for flesh, digging for bone. The craving was on me like a fever, and it burned across my forehead and through my bones, driving its whispers into my ears and making my spine writhe and crack. Visions of pristine white lines on glittering mirror ice filled my head as my insides seemed to bare wild and untamed teeth, hacking their way through my muscle and bone until surely it seemed they would eat their way through my skin and be all there was left of me. I looked up through the haze to see the path: we were almost at the lecture building. It was rising, gray and dull and uniform, at the end of the road and I stared at it like a talisman, desperate to get inside and shrug off the piercing sharpness of the daylight that carried without mercy the awful words that hung in our wake. The trees whipped bare in the wind on either side of the path, and the parking lot rose to the right; a bleak landscape of frozen cars and faded asphalt paint. I was staring at the lines, wildly thinking that I wanted to lie myself down in between them and let myself merge with their weary stone-silent dreams, when John cleared his throat.

"I have a piano recital tomorrow night."

He was still carefully not looking at me, and though it was much harder than it should have been, I took a step closer to him in a vain attempt to tell him I was always ready to listen, no matter what he thought or what I told him. We walked close together now, our arms nearly touching as I offered him a pathetic grin and a thumbs-up sign.

"Way to go. Brahms?"

"Yeah. It should be interesting, I've got a panel of five judges this time and the scholarship is up to ten thousand this year."

His eyes were on the ground, but his tone was light, and I forced myself to keep in stride as he rushed along. Never being a kid who had it easy, his parents had died when he was ten years old. A car accident had killed them both, at the same time, instantly. John grew up from there on out in foster home after foster home, learning to become wiser than his years and taking refuge in books, ignoring when government cheques became smaller and the guardians at the foster homes began not to care about the silent, weird kid with glasses and a funny voice. He became a literary and musical genius, using the latter to propel himself out of the tiny clapboard houses that were the anthems of foster care and into university via scholarships that I had never seen someone work so hard to get. I had coasted through life with relative ease, and the only reason we were still together in university was because he was made of sheer grit and awe-inspiring stamina. As usual, he had done all the work while I sat back and let life hand it to me easy, real easy. I would have given him the money any time, and I had offered several times. But it seemed to be a matter of personal pride to him to get there on the only means he had, and I let him do it, all the while uncomfortably conscious of a heart better and brighter than mine watching over me as I tripped and fell.

"You'll get it," I said lamely, and he glanced at me with a quicksilver half-smile flickering like a ghost on his pale lips.

"I know. Theory is going well so far, too. I'm not having so much trouble with the history aspect anymore. How is your English Literature going now?"

A sudden flash of Teryl cracked across my mind; I felt momentarily winded as I tried to push her out again.

"Okay," I said thickly. "We're doing group shit again. It seems like he never gets tired of it."

It was then that John laughed: a tiny, hitching giggle that turned the gray skies silver and the frozen wind to pittance. I looked quickly at him, arching an eyebrow as he grinned at me, the old sardonic look sparkling in his eyes for a moment.

"He must know you hate it. Wicked. You get stuck with the fashion guru crowd again?"

I wanted simultaneously to smack the back of his head at his obvious delight at the mere mention of my discomfort and press a kiss to his tiny, pinched face. He looked positively transcended as he stared at me, laugher already creasing his forehead and sarcastic remarks ready to be fired. Good old John. For no matter what I did, no matter how tense the situation, he could always be counted on to not let it drag out for longer than it had to.

"Not this time," I murmured, watching him out of the corner of my eye as we approached the building. He looked surprised, and cast a questioning look my way.

"Someone actually approached me," I said in reply, keeping my eyes off him as I said this, concentrating on the cracked pathway that was moving steadily under our feet. Our footfall was muted by the wind that was pushing at our coats and faces, and I thought of Teryl's eyes; as icy and probing as the wind that was slipping its tendril fingers through my hair.

"Who?"

Keeping my voice as perfectly light as his, I shrugged and shook my hair out of my eyes as the wind raked it across my face.

"The new student."

John frowned a little; I could see the creases on his forehead plunge into stark relief for a second as confusion made tiny ridges and shadows in his fair, cold-bruised skin.

"The new student? You mean the one who you thought you knew?"

I nodded and watched as the frown etched itself a little deeper, the furrows of his eyebrows making the fine hair there glitter dully in the overcast light.

"What is her name?"

And then we came to the point. Her name... I hadn't dared to let myself try saying it out loud since I had greeted her that day, two nights ago. Since that terrible, confusing, euphoric moment where her name had conjured up sights in my head that I had never seen before, nor, it seemed, I would ever, ever forget. Just the whisper of her name had thrown me into a frenzy of sight, thought and sound that assailed me like a thunderstorm and held me in its thrall until it was through with me. Could I say it, I wondered? Did I want to chance becoming an incoherent, shaking mess in front of John again? Because I was beyond fear of what the visions held anymore; nothing that beautiful and so resonant of perfection could keep me afraid. A thousand times I had run the Angel through my head, and each time I came away breathless, but not afraid. Curious, now. The thought of Teryl did not frighten me; instead I wished to be as close to her as possible, to try and discover the root and meaning behind the almost biblical response she was invoking in me. But to do this in front of someone who already thought I was unstable, and run the risk of him asking me even harder questions was not something I could afford to chance.

But he was looking at me, a strange light in his eyes, and I spoke quietly, slowly, trying with invisible hands to hold onto the ledge that kept me from plunging into the maelstrom.

"Teryl," I said, omitting the last name out of sheer cowardice.

Rowan.

I blinked as my vision seemed to flash with a vortex of red, blue and white, and again I saw the massive tree standing before me, seeming to look at me with eyes invisible to my perception but so much more aware than any I had ever encountered before. The leaves glittered like fire and gold under a starless sky and the bark was old, weathered skin that pulsed with throbbing blood in veins carved from wood and limitless volition. The roots sunk like fingers into the soil that faded away to black, and the spread of branches reaching towards a tourmaline heaven were a thousand voices that sang of the earth and all of its sons; every darkest pain, every fiery regret, each act of beauty and all the moments of God.

It was waiting for me, I thought. And I blinked again. The thought had come into my mind like a stone thrown into water, unbidden and involuntary. And in another blink, my mind felt suddenly as wide as the solar system and as clear as Himalayan air, and for one half moment I felt the world, in its entirety, resting beneath my feet. I felt myself, as small as a grain of sand, standing on a globe bigger than even my boundless human ability to imagine, and I realized that space had to be infinite because only something so bold and vast could ever presume to hold the complex perfection of which we stood upon.

"Is she nice?"

I snapped my head around as John's voice assailed me through the worlds, and I realized it had taken merely the space between breaths to wrench my mind wider than an ocean and let the world pour in. I exhaled in a burst of release, and thought I saw the galaxy spiral away in the mist clouding the air.

"Yeah," I managed to say, marveling at how calm my voice sounded when the wild thumping of my voice beat out a damaging rhythm against my ribcage. "She is."

And she was. For all the confusion, strangeness and otherworldly tension, she felt nice to me. Her smile held no trace of plasticity, and she was quiet when she had no need to speak; a rare thing in the world. And then John offered me a half-smile, and I thought I caught a strange shadow creeping into his eyes as he lifted them off mine to look down the path. I had no time to wonder at it as his elbow nudged into mine and he was gesturing with his head towards the lecture building in front of us.

"Looks like you have someone waiting for you."

I frowned and looked up, slowing a little as I saw her standing by the front doors, watching me. Even at this distance I could see the brightness of her eyes, and her copper-gold hair was like pale fire under the starkness of the sky. The burgundy of her coat was slick and soft and it shimmered softly against the black pants covering her legs. A bright blue scarf was about her neck, fluttering gently in the breeze that moved like charging lions around us but like sinuous panthers around her. I could see the faint pattern of Celtic knotwork embroidered on the silk; it matched the design I had seen on the camera strap before. My eyes traced the pattern hungrily, and again I felt the slow, burning longing as she sparkled like a key just shy of the lock. The pattern was right, I felt myself thinking. It was the pattern of the Angel. But how I knew, I couldn't tell, and I stood there staring as it flooded through me like water from a hidden well. She stood still as she watched me, but I could discern a smile touching her lips like a slowly blooming kiss, and she raised a slender hand to bid me greeting. It lifted through the air with an almost poetic grace, and a flash of the Angel glittered in its whiteness as the daylight grazed it, and I was thinking endlessly of reddest red and brightest eyes as I waved back.

"Is that her?" John asked, glancing enquiringly at me.

"Yeah," I said, and I knew I was smiling against my will.

And then we were at the bottom of the steps and she was stepping out to greet us, her athletic strides taking her to the edge of the top stair before we reached it. She held her gloved hands demurely in front of her as she deepened her smile to me and then gave it to John in turn.

"Hi," she said simply, and the wind caught her hair in a spontaneous moment of carelessness and blew it about her face so that she was hidden from us by a cloud of spun crimson and gold.

"Hi," I said back, and watched as she shook her head to clear her eyes which then dropped down to look at John, keeping level and steady as he returned the gaze.

"John, this is Teryl," I said after a moment of watching him take her in, seeing how his calm blue eyes met and held her burning ice ones, and how a grudging but almost instant approval registered in the way he imperceptibly straightened his shoulders and lifted his chin. I wondered if she did that to everyone she met, not to mention the wild visions and uncomfortable sensations. I watched him suspiciously for evidence of those as he looked at her, but he remained as implacable as a fortress as he delivered her a cool, calculating stare. John was not easy to impress; he didn't hate people, he just didn't like them very much. He often didn't bother with niceties if the person didn't hold his interest, but he stuck out his hand towards her after a moment that she took instantly, her almost masculine fingers dwarfing his tiny, piano-player ones.

"Hi, John," she said, and her voice was quiet waves washing up upon a timeless shore. It was gentle, almost deep; made beautiful by softness and not quite feminine by depth. I saw him start, but he covered it well by shaking her hand quickly and then letting her fingers go.

"Hi. Nice to meet you," he replied, and then surveying her for a moment longer, turned his sharp gaze on me and offered me a quick smile.

"Well, I'd better get to class. I'll see you at the recital?"

I nodded, and a feeling skipped through my heart as though a finger had touched it. Of course I'd be there. It was one of the only calming things in my life: watching John play. He could play the simplest pieces, even scales, and turn them into spellbinding things of beauty that left you with your eyes closed and breath arrested, thinking of forgotten things. And I hadn't had the chance to watch him play in ages; I was surprised he'd even asked me.

"I'll be there," I said, and then he was moving past me, past her, and into the building. He moved with the swiftness of a shadow, and I was aware of unsaid things trailing behind him like a vapour as he disappeared into the hallway. His head was bowed as he walked, and I watched him from behind the glass as he turned a corner and left my view.

Well, at least he asked me.

"What does he play?"

I looked up and saw that Teryl was holding open the door for me that John had passed through, and I stepped through quickly, murmuring my thanks.

"Piano. He's giving a recital for a scholarship tonight."

We walked side by side down the hallway; already I was amazed at how comfortable she was to be around. She just seemed to exude this easy, confidant air that permeated the world around her and made things a little brighter and a lot more real. She was turning heads again as she walked with me down the hall, but as her wide, languid smile flashed at me through the air, I knew she was oblivious to the attention in a way that astonished me. She had no idea of the presence she commanded. How was this possible?

"He must be good," she remarked, and her laughter was silver glitter in the air. "I love to watch people play."

"He is," I said, as the bars of fluorescent light above us passed as smooth as cream reflected on the gleaming tile floor. I could hear the sound of her boots as she walked; gentle thumps that echoed softly throughout the hall. "He's the best I've seen."

"Do you play?"

I shook my head and smiled a little.

"No. I play the guitar kind of badly, though."

She laughed again, and it reached through the air to send thrills of delight spiraling down my spine. Her fair, pale skin seemed to glow from within as she winked at me, and I believed in fairy tales as her eyes sparkled frost and ice at me.

"Who doesn't?"

I grinned at her, and this time it was a full, rare grin that began to make me blush and shake my hair in front of my eyes. She watched me quietly, a knowing light in her eyes that made me blush further and a smile on her lips that was small but eloquent.

"Do you play anything?" I asked hurriedly, watching as she shook her head, an expression of not-quite regret crooking her features.

"No, not me. I'm not the musical one in the family. My brother can play violin like a god, but all I do is take pictures."

I nodded. The camera.

"Photography is your major, right?"

She smiled ruefully and nodded back.

"It tries to be, yeah."

But before I could figure out that strange remark, she was stepping past me to go in the door of the English Literature auditorium, holding the door with one hand for me as I passed through. I followed her up the steps to our seats, no fewer than twenty people stopping what they were doing to stare at us as we passed by. I suppressed a grin as she sat down next to me, and before I got my ass in the chair, she had her book on the table open to a hand-written page I could see was titled `Michael Cunningham'. Under it was the title of each book he'd written with what looked like a synopsis for each.

"I see you've done some work," I said, pointing to the page as I dug in my backpack for my own notebook. The books in there were piled upon each other helter-skelter, and I wrestled with the thin, crumpled notebook for a few moments before managing to yank it out.

"Yeah, I tried," she said quietly. "They look like pretty interesting books. He writes in photographs."

I arched a brow as she said this, and looked down at the page as if her summaries might explain what she meant. She grinned a little, and I got caught for a moment staring at the gracefulness of her smile and the flash of her ivory teeth.

"How so?" I asked, curious for her explanation although I had an idea of what she meant. I'd heard him described in many ways before, but never so strangely, and never so close to my own, lonely perspective.

"Well, he writes for the moment, doesn't he? Like a photograph. A photograph captures a single, solitary moment in time. He sees the beauty in each of those moments, much like a camera lens does. He explains them down to the minutest detail, often times using just those to get his point across. Each scene is a photograph. Or at least, I think they are; I only read excerpts on the internet."

I nodded slowly, staring at the page in front of her. Maybe this project would be easier than I thought. This wasn't the normal computer generated idiot sitting beside me this time. I was conscious of her unwavering gaze and clean, cedar scent as she watched me, and I shivered a little as I thought of crosses and circles in forests too real for comfort. The clear image of a white cloak and hood moving like a dancer through night tree trunks and autumn leaves...

"No, you've pretty much got it," I said. "I was thinking that The Hours and Home At The End Of The World might be the best to merge. There are chapters in each that would work well together, and I could lend you the books so that you could read them."

"Sounds delightful," she said with a temperate smile, and then Professor Richler walked into the auditorium. The chattering voices fell, as one, into reproachful silence, and he sent a look as sharp as a knife into the middle of it. His dusty black suit hung limply on his frame as he strode to his desk, and he sat down with a creak on the stiff looking wooden chair. Surveying us all with an expression similar to that of kings long dead and dust, he made a sharp sighing sound that left all of us completely understanding of his world-weary position.

"May I remind you all that this is a study hall period: talking should not be necessary and the loudest noises I should hear are pages turning and pencils writing. Begin."

I rolled my eyes in spite of myself and shook my head as I looked down at my notebook, and a sudden, tiny giggle from beside me made me look over. Teryl was watching me with sparkling eyes and a wry expression on her rose coloured lips that made me catch my breath in laughter in spite of myself.

"He takes himself very seriously, doesn't he?" she whispered, and I had to duck my head to avoid laughing right out loud. He certainly did. More than anyone I ever met, even John. And that was a lot. I nodded at the notebook but didn't dare look back up at her again, and we spent the study in silence while I snuck secret, furtive looks at her every so often.

Just an ordinary girl, with ordinary features, that would look ordinary on anyone else. And yet, all thrown together on her: it became downright metaphysical. Somehow the long red hair, which I'd seen before on other girls and didn't think too much of, seemed to mimic fire as it poured from her head in an unwavering curtain of copper. Somehow the pale blue eyes, which countless other people had and didn't look all that special to me, gained an aqueous fantasy as she surveyed the world through a gaze made of snowfall and crystal. Somehow the fairness of her skin, which always looked out of place on anyone but children, glowed with the richness of newly churned cream and caught the light of everything around her to turn it into poetry. Somehow the ungainliness of her boyish body, which looked regrettable and embarrassing on other girls, looked like an instrument of power and grace as it moved through the air.

It was baffling.

I watched as she turned in her notebook to a fresh page, one hand writing the date at the top of the page and the other reaching into the bag at her feet. She withdrew a somber-looking text book and placed it on the desk, and I had only a moment to read the title –Uses of Photography in Medical Science- before she flipped it open and the pages fell with a glossy flapping sound upon one another until her designation was reached. She began to jot down in bullet style some highlighted facts from within the book, and I tried to concentrate on my own failing pursuits as she sent her pen flying across the page.

I was working on an essay due for my History of Literature class; it was due in three days and I hadn't so much as gotten a thesis for it yet. I was supposed to be finding some magical, hitherto unrealized view of Dostoyevsky's early works in comparison to his personal, and somewhat distorted, life. It just wasn't happening, but I struggled to try and do something as the time wore on. I wrote down the titles of the books I had read, and searched vainly for some sort of memory of what they had contained to no avail. It wasn't a slight against the man himself; I quite enjoyed his works. However, the problem was in that I usually only read him for the incredible, meandering lengths it took him to get to the point of the novel, and after I was finished laughing at his masterful, dry cynicism, the rest of the book was a ghost in my mind. But perhaps that would be good enough? Maybe I could try comparing his lack of forte to what I knew of his thoughts and try to find a common ground between them and the somewhat vague and untruthful knowledge of his personal doings.

I was contemplating this a little fuzzily when, like a whip cracked over a pool of ice, Professor Richler's voice shot through the auditorium, making me jump.

"Time."

And true to his word, a small, discreet chime sounded from the tiny speaker above the door, signaling the end of class. As one, the whole of the student body flipped closed their respective books and binders, and the sound of bags unzipping filled the air. A small murmur of chatter rose as people began to stand and heft their bags onto their shoulders, and Professor Richler sat at the front of his desk with a frigid expression twisting his features as he icily viewed the leaving class. I had to hide a smile as he shook his head primly, an air of such grave disgust upon his shoulders as he bowed his head to his work once more. I closed my notebook and stuffed it back into the backpack, doing up the beaten, worn zipper as Teryl stood beside me. I stood and looked at her; she had her backpack on with her camera case hanging around her neck, standing with a smile and holding out a hand to motion me past her. I flushed and muttered thanks as I sidestepped her, and though I had tried to avoid it, my entire arm and left side of my chest brushed up against her with a whispering of fabric upon leather that seemed as loud as the crack of thunder ripping across a midnight sky that precedes the really earth-shattering bang.

My heart began to thud erratically as the feeling of her touch radiated down my arm and lodged itself somewhere in the confines of my chest. It felt like pins and needles without the burning, almost tickling pain, and my whole body shuddered as I almost lost my balance on the stairs. I reached out for an empty desk as my equilibrium shifted and caught it just in time as, again, my senses were assailed by burning cedar smoke that I was sure wasn't there and an unbidden, undeniable sight of a makeshift wooden altar in quietly waiting woods flashed before my eyes. I took this all in stride somehow as I descended the steps, and I heard Teryl's quiet footfall behind me as she followed me down. In a whirl of blindness and the feeling that the ground had been ripped out from beneath my feet, I clutched my left arm helplessly as I headed towards the door. I was through it and moving quickly through the hall when a voice made me stop and sent blood rushing to my ears, making them pound throbbingly.

"Evan?"

I turned slowly on one heel, and tried to smile as I saw Teryl through the haze, hurrying to catch up with me, her coat flowing behind her and her hair bobbing sparklingly on her shoulders.

"Hey," I said as she came to a thudding stop in front of me, and it took her a moment to catch her breath as she offered me an apologetic smile, the camera case swinging slight from her neck. I stared at it helplessly, the strap seeming to glow under the fluorescent light humming above us. The woven patterns of sky, turquoise and night blue seemed to throb as I stared hauntedly at them; the intricacy of the work still impressing me, annihilating me. In a heartbeat, I seemed to see the pattern and the rowan tree both, and one was the language of the other as the whispering of each sunk like an emulsion in my mind. The taste of circles and crosses was on my tongue as I lifted my gaze to find hers, and the pattern around her neck was reaching out to me with terrible, pulling hands that wrapped themselves around my lungs and turned my breath into hitching gasps.

I was dimly aware of a changing of light in her eyes as she stared at me, the expression on her visage flickering to a deep, seeking frown for a nano second before it was gone and replaced by a smile. It left me wondering at the strange expression I had seen in her eyes before she turned it off like some sort of mental light switch – it was a nameless thing that seemed as large as the night sky and just as elusive, but it left me with a nagging thought on the forefront of my mind as she began to speak.

Recognition.

Deepest recognition.

"—so I was thinking, well, wondering more like, if you had the time, and you didn't mind, you could show me around."

I blinked at her. I must have looked completely blank or hesitant, because she instantly took a step back and grinned sheepishly, shaking her head and waving her hands in the air.

"It's okay if you don't want to—I understand."

I was astounded as I saw –impossibly—what looked to be the incredible flush of embarrassment crawl up her cheeks and bloom their like a pink bruise, and she was already turning away before I managed to force my vocal cords into working order again.

"No, it's not that," I croaked, and she stopped to look at me, a querying look in her eyes.

But what it was, I didn't seem to know or have the ability to say, because no words came out of my mouth and she stood before me expectantly as a blush to challenge her own began to burn up my neck and onto my face. And I stood there, miserably, as people flowed all around us, and I saw John waiting at the end of the hall, his hands in his pockets but his eyes unwaveringly watching us. It endured for a moment more before a sudden look of dawning comprehension crashed over her face and she laughed helplessly, a huge grin splitting her face and her eyes sparkling merrily as she patted my shoulder.

"I don't mean on a date!" She trilled, and laughed again. "I just got here a few weeks ago and I haven't really had a chance to explore the city, and we have to meet up for you to give me those books and for us to work on the assignment anyway!"

She was grinning; I was confused. I hadn't really thought she was asking me out on a date, I hadn't thought that far ahead into her question yet. But what confused me more was the crashing, overriding sense of relief at her explanation; it flooded me like a dam exploding, and I felt my heart thudding as every sensation I had ever associated with relief shot itself off in my body. She wasn't asking me out. Good. But why the massive response to that knowledge? Would it have been so bad if she had asked me? I wouldn't have said yes, but it wasn't that pressing of an issue... would it have been that bad? And as my brain said no, my heart lurched, and a taste of bitterness rose in my mouth like bile and I felt dizzy as waves of revulsion made my vision swim.

What the fuck?!

"Yeah," I managed after a horrible moment of thinking my mouth was stuck together with lockjaw. "That would be fine. Great, I mean," I floundered as she stared searchingly into my eyes.

"Good!" she grinned, and I couldn't help but feel she knew my answer before she'd even asked. "When are you free?"

I was conscious of John still standing at the end of the hallway, leaning against the wall. His head was bowed now and he seemed to be concentrating on kicking something around on the floor. I lifted my gaze back to her.

"Well, not tonight, I have John's recital. What about tomorrow?"

Show her around? Show her around what? Toronto might be the biggest city in Canada, but I still had no idea what it contained. I had been lost in books, self-involvement and, lately, drugs, all my life... I had a vague conception of the workings of the city around me but that was tenuous at best.

Still, never mind...

"That would work," she was saying, and then she was moving past me with a glowing, radiant smile, squeezing my arm before being lost to view. "See you tomorrow night; I'll pick you up at your dorm at eight!"

I was nodding bewilderedly as she said this, and then I whirled around as a thought struck me.

"You don't know where that is!" I yelled as her moving head merged with the dozens of others heading further into the building.

She turned around and began to walk backwards; her smile was porcelain and laughter in the glowing light of the hall.

"North campus, residence three!"

And I stared wordlessly after her as she turned around again and ran down the hall. Would it always be that way? I thought of the tingling in my arm, which now felt like it had been hit with a baseball bat, and the sureness of her eyes as she had called out where I lived to the entire hall. Would she always make me feel as though I were in dreams awake? And would I never be surprised at the depth of her unexplainable knowledge as she moved like some sort of unstoppable tidal wave through my life? And how was I to know that she would be around for any length of time anyway? She seemed to engineer a live-and-believe way of life that infected those around her – or me, at any rate. There was nothing I knew for certain with the girl, and yet in so doing, I knew everything. And one of those things was that I wasn't going to be rid of her, not for a good long time yet.

And, weirdly, it didn't seem so bad.

"Got a date?"

I whirled around, startled, and came face to face with John – or rather, face to air space; I had to look a little further down to see him. He was watching me with a strange half-smile on his lips, and I laughed a little and shook my head, still gingerly rubbing my arm. I saw him cast it a weird look for a second but then his eyes were back on mine and awaiting an answer to his question.

"No. We have that assignment to work on, and she asked if I could show her around the city afterwards. She's only been here a couple of weeks."

"So it is a date. A study date."

I rolled my eyes at his boorish grin and the leering emphasis on `study', and he grinned wider, shaking his head as we walked down the hall together.

"No, it is not a date. She made that very clear."

And so did I, I thought, frowning slightly as I remembered the crashing sense of relief at her explanation. It had been like being told you had to make a speech in front of hundreds of people you didn't even know and then having the event cancelled the second before you were supposed to be on stage. My hands had started sweating and my heart to race; I almost swore that an audible sigh of satisfaction had slipped past my lips.

But my words seemed to have no effect on John whatsoever as he continued to walk gleefully beside me, a sardonic cast in his eyes that made me quicken my pace and ready myself for the onslaught. He was silent for a while longer as we passed through the doors and began to walk down the path. The cold autumn wind picked up his hair instantly like a child finding a loved plaything after being denied it for so long, whipping it around with an almost indecent delight. But all of this was lost on John.

"Who would've thought. Evan the Ladies Man."

Oh my God. I groaned and shook my head, going even faster and sighing as I heard his quick little footsteps right behind me, keeping marvelous but irritating pace.

"Fuck you," I said without any real conviction; I was grinning in spite of myself. Nothing about being a `Ladies Man', that was for sure, but his tiny voice and grinning face were enough to set me off any day, and I think he knew it.

"No, I'm afraid not, my friend. That's between you and her now."

"Christ," I muttered, and he giggled, and I delivered him what I hoped to be a scorching glare of utmost disapproval. He only smirked at me, and then I shoved him off the path.

"Later asshole," I said, for we had come to the fork in the road that wound to the Conservatory via one path, and the Sciences building via another. John's destination was the Conservatory, mine the Sciences.

"See you tonight," John yelled after me as I sped down the path, and I flipped him my middle finger by way of acknowledgement as I left him behind. The autumn wind blew a scattering of browning, dancing leaves in between us, and I thought I caught his high-pitched, hysterical giggle on the air as he receded into the distance.

Well, it certainly wasn't easier by any means, but he was trying, that was for sure. And maybe he could see that I was too. I just hoped that he wouldn't try too hard, because the darkness of my head was an evil light, and one all too lonely without him. I just didn't think that I could stand to break his heart, not when mine was already frozen. I had to try, though, to tell him that I loved him. And if intermittent moments of interaction were all that were given unto me, so be it.