Ablaze , ᶦᵛʸ

c.2

A wistful sigh escaped Emlyn's lips as she watched the passersby down on the sidewalk, simply observing the people, drinking from her water bottle to stay hydrated. It had been one week since she had left Jasmine, and she still felt just as shitty as when she kissed her goodbye.

Emlyn still felt the warmth of her mouth against hers, the cold skin of her face pressing firmly on top of her, tears welling in her eyes and the salty taste of Jasmine's tears leaking in between her lips, melting on her tongue like snow. She still missed her just as much as then. She still loved her and wanted her just as much as then. Her mind kept wandering back to Jasmine and Australia.

But she distracted herself by working at her job, making as much money as possible to pay for rent at the motel she lived in, and took walks at noon around the city.

As soon as she left Australia, Emlyn had taken a plane right to Switzerland— because it was the place she apparently grew up before her birth family abandoned her when she was young, before she got adopted into my now dead adoptive family— which was several, actually, since it wasn't a one stop flight. And it had been quite pricy, but her dead family's fortune had luckily just enough for her to purchase tickets for herself. But she knew she couldn't keep leeching off her dead parents' wallet; the will would soon come into play and the credit cards belonging to her parents were probably going to be useless in a day or two.

Which was why, as soon as Emlyn landed in Switzerland, she had taken the liberty of opening her own bank account and scoured the city— Geneva— which was actually pretty well known for Switzerland's banks, so Emlyn didn't have any trouble to find one to visit.

As for the job, however, it wasn't easy to get one. But Emlyn had found one, at a fast food joint, and she was filling in an application that very day. She had just enough money deposited in her bank account that she could live off for a few days. If she took any more, though, she knew it would be too suspicious and they'd think it was stolen. But she kept using small amounts off the credit card, not wanting to use her emergency funds quite yet, until earlier that day she checked the account on the banking page before going to use it to buy food, and realized that it didn't exist anymore.

They finally took it off, and now Emlyn was completely isolated from her family's funds. She was really on her own this time.

Turning her phone off, Emlyn let out a disgruntled groan as she pocketed it, and twisted her fingers around nervously. "What the hell am I gonna do now?" she mulled her situation over to herself for several minutes, and decided she'd ponder over it further in the shower.

She stripped naked and stepped in the shower, cleaning and contemplating. Inhaling in the water vapor in the clean air of the bathroom, she wrapped a towel around her naked body, walking out off the tiled bathroom floor and onto the carpet cautiously.

She flipped on the tv, going through the channels, when she heard a faint knock at the door. Scrambling to action, she grabbed her bathrobe and tied it around her body snugly, covering everything. "What?" she asked through the door, not wanting to open it.

"Ms. Reyna Kamodo?" an employee asked.

"Yes?" answered Emlyn, quickly rushing over to her bed and changing at the speed of light.

"Uh, we've got a message from someone—"

Emlyn ran back to the door and unlocked it, peering at a short stout man with red curly hair and a trimmed beard. "Hi."

"Hello."

"What's the message? Who's it from?" Emlyn asked, trying to sound calm and controlled when she was dying to know who had contacted her.

"Um... it's from a miss... Jaminta Coleman?"

Jaminta, Jasmine.

She nodded eagerly, and the employee handed me a small envelope. "Thanks," she told them.

She closed the door and locked it behind me, shuffling to the couch and sitting down. An advertisement played on the TV in the background as she opened the envelope slowly, the pads of her finger gingerly dragging out a thin piece of paper, torn from a notebook.

Unfolding it, her eyes ping-ponged from the left to the right of the paper as I read.

I tried green tea and I don't like it. —J.

Emlyn's lips parted slightly as a memory flashes to the front of her mind, crushing her breathing.

Jasmine never liked green tea.

"When we were like sixteen, she swore to me if she ever had green tea again it was because someone held a gun to her head, and even then she'd be reluctant," Emlyn mumbled to herself in stark realization.

One thing was clear.

Jasmine was in danger.