Blood Moon

Chapter Ten - Sunbathing with Nina

My heart beat faster and faster as she glared up at me. Fear was not an emotion I was used to handling and it is true I did not deal with it well. For in that moment there seemed only one thing I could do to stop my discovery.

If my mission was trifled with, it could burn my siblings' work to nothing - I told myself as I kissed her. Letting time that had always flown past me, stop. Then, once, my lungs burnt for air, we paused, breathed and did it again. Until eventually she pushed herself from me and looked, truly looked, tears running from her eyes. It was good she stopped because I doubt I ever would have.

After that, I dug my nails into Lilo's flesh until blood brimmed. The pain of the action was mine as I swore it would not happen again. It had been a long time since I had been held by such a small vessel and I think because of that I was unprepared for the intensity of sensations it caused. That was all, it would not happen again.

My deceit, however, was not over. I copied Lilo's voice, finally trialing it. "I'm sorry." Gently, Nina wept into me. "I know I have not been myself." She gave a bitter chuckle. "When I passed out Nina. The world didn't go black." Only a half truth was going to trick a witch, even an unpractised one. "It was as if I was something else and I've watched another world fall, landed on this one. Then I watched everything, from practically the dawn of time and then I woke up and I was still me and I just -" I let Lilo's voice break, as I had heard Nina's do often in the last week. "Just don't know how to be human anymore but I'm learning again."

She was silent for a long time but her grip on my hand finally softened. "You know." She gave me the smallest of smiles. "I feel you here now, you haven't been here the last few days but I think you're back. It's going to be ok."

Then we talked in the sunshine's warmth, of my book of war and about the others we'd been reading. Including the trashiness of Romeo and Juliet, which she also struggled to understand. Later, as the sun sank and she pointed out the names of stars, I described which I had passed on my journey here. She listened, then reminisced of another starry night Lilo and her had spent together. A burn met my cheeks and I was so overwhelmed in my jealousy that there was no room in the small body I inhabited to worry it was a human emotion.