Born of starlight and shadows

~Part sixteen: Stella(?)~

Was I looking in a mirror? I wondered. It was the only explanation I could think of that made the slightest sense.

But then, the eyes moved. And I hadn't budged.

I blinked, and to my amazement, the darkness that had crept back over me since I had landed here began to disperse. Soon I could see that the eyes belonged to a person, standing just a little ways away from me.

Even though the darkness had cleared, I could only see part of his face. He was wearing a tattered blue hoodie that seemed too big for his scrawny frame. The hood was pulled way over his face, and that, combined with the long strands of black hair that managed to escape the hood, mostly concealing his eyes, I wondered how he could see at all.

Eyes, that, I noticed, seemed to be filled with nothing but pain. And...there was something about the way he carried himself: like there was a huge burden on his shoulders. In terms of physical appearance he looked as though he were roughly the same age as me, but both of those things made him seem much, much older.

It made me wonder exactly who he was, and what his life had been like.

His eyes narrowed, studying me warily. I got the feeling he was afraid, afraid of what I might do.

He stared at me for a moment longer, then surveyed his-our, I guess-surroundings. The world was now a blank, empty canvas, no longer full of darkness, but not bursting with light, either. No, it was somewhere in between. And it no longer stretched on for what had looked like an eternity-it seemed to close the two of us into a space about the size of my bedroom at home. My mind jolted at the comparison, but that's what it looked like to me, though there were furnishings, no door, just the two of us.

His eyes flickered back to me, and he shook his head, then glanced back at me.

I finally dared to ask the question that had been on my mind since this strange new dream...or well, whatever this was began (it no longer felt anything at all like other dreams I'd had, no, it felt far more real).

"Who...who exactly are you?"

A frown crossed his lips. A moment passed. Then another. Still, there was silence.

"You can-you can understand what I'm saying, right?" I asked.

My words seemed to echo around the room.

"Yes," he said, and his voice was barely, just barely above a whisper. "I can."

I wondered...

Had I seen his lips move? 

Surely I had. 

His voice was so-well. I didn't know how to describe it but it was definitely, definitely there. 

"Then..." I took a slight step forward.

He immediately drew backward, his hand reaching for something inside his pocket. I was reminded of how Hannah always rubbed her silver bracelet when she was feeling strong emotions, how Maria played with her glasses, pushing them back up her nose or taking them off and cleaning them on her shirt when she needed something to do with her hands, how I tried to cling to some semblance of control, going through facts in my mind, trying not to get flustered and be even more of a klutz than I was already.

Everyone had some way of expressing their emotions without saying a word.

I took a step backwards when I could see fear, real, true fear reflected in his eyes.

Not at all like thrill-fear. People did things to make themselves scared-they watched horror films, rode roller coasters, went through haunted houses-but that wasn't real fear-they were never in any danger, none at all. But this-this, what I was seeing, was deep. And definitely, definitely real.