Dreams

Chapter twenty-nine

"She's dead!"

"How can you be so sure? Maybe this is the same thing that happened with Lily..."

"I can feel it. You don't understand..." He muttered that last bit, his fingers already in his hair due to frustration.

I never knew he had so much emotion inside of him, more than just flirtation and teasing."You never know-" I argued.

"She's gone. They finally got her, and it's all my fault. I promised I'd always protect her," he bit his lip, squeezing his eyes shut in frustration and grief.

-A while earlier-

"Awesome," I breathed, my eyes scanning our surroundings.

"Hell yeah."

I turned my head under the helmet to the right and saw Aaron by my side. He wore the same spacesuit that I had on, hovering near me, flipping upside down, and cartwheeling in space. He caught my gaze and the tip of his lips tugged up into a semi-smile.

We were suspended in space, our bodies hovering as we used every bit of control on them that we could. Looking around, I felt my breath lodge in my throat. All around us were stars and distant planets, like someone splattered glowing colors on a boring black canvass. It was beautiful. Everything glowed so bright, I could barely breath from the overwhelming sight before me.

I tried swimming my way in the void space towards Aaron, who wasn't so far away from my side, but he kept moving, of course, and I couldn't get to him.

The speakers built in my helmet crackled and I listened as Aaron said, "Where's Earth?"

I tried to shrug with my suit on and wasn't sure if that worked so I said, "Aaron, if you haven't studied astronomy in school yet, what makes you think I did?"

"I thought maybe you know because of all those facts your dad is obsessed with."

"Aren't you obsessed with them too?" I would've raised my eyebrows if Aaron hadn't cartwheeled around me.

"Yeah, I guess but I don't know as much as he does."

I tried shaking my head. "Should we go look for some planet? Find the others?"

From what little I could see of Aaron, I put together that his lips tugged into yet another grin. "Yes, yes we should."

"Okay," I said, "How do we find them?"

He floated closer to me and after some time, managed to hold my hand. The gloves that covered our bare skin felt annoyingly in the way, but I liked that we were linked in some way.

"We look," he answered.

I glanced at his face, my eyes taking in every detail I was so used to seeing, yet I never got sick of. Then he began to pull me along with him, which was probably not an easy task to do, but I've seen his arms before.

"I'm tired," he spoke a few moments later, "there's nothing here. It's just stars and distant planets that we never seem to reach."

I agreed, "You're right. Maybe I can find a rocket or a spaceship somewhere..."

"You mean conjure one?"

I rolled my eyes but said nothing.

"Am I hallucinating or..." he pointed to our right and I turned to see something shiny moving our way.

"What is that?" I asked.

Aaron was silent as he dragged me with him closer to the object that was quickly moving closer.