Intertwined

Chapter 21: The Thread Of Life

It had been a whole three weeks since the Battle. Life in the Academy had settled back to normal, at least for everyone else. For me, well...I was getting better at thinking of and facing my future, so completely different from what I'd even vaguely visualized it to be back then.

I stood in the library, trying to catch my breath. People were still eager to talk to me and strike up a conversation, and the ordeal of talking to strangers all the time was leaving me a little harassed. I don't know if I'd have enjoyed the attention had my mind not been so occupied otherwise.

In my favourite haunt, I felt a little calmer. The late afternoon sunlight was shining through the stained-glass windows, scattering red, blue, and yellow patterns over the floor and the mahogany bookshelves. I stepped silently past the shelves, until I reached the one I had been trying to retrieve a book from the day Luka and I met. The myriad experiences of the past few months sparkled like brilliant associations on the pages of my memory, and I sighed, thinking over it all.

I had been avoiding the subject of my inner thoughts lately. The look in his eyes....there was something in them that hadn't been there before. The words 'You're my dream, too,' flashed in my mind again, making me squirm on my feet in ecstasy or fear, I didn't know which. Even without.....my emotion-sensing affinity, I could still perceive it. It threatened to overwhelm me with a maddening, unceasing joy. But now...now it was horribly different. I had lost the part of me that I could count on. I couldn't surrender myself to the fullness of love when I felt so very......empty.

So I had been avoiding him and everyone else, despite what Arctia had said. I woke up before Seraphina in the mornings, and rushed to the library after class so that I wouldn't meet anyone. I missed them, so, so much, but there was a strange satisfaction in torturing myself with loneliness. After all, I would be going away in a few months' time, so what did it matter now?

"We're always meeting here." Appearing suddenly, Luka walked towards me slowly, as if afraid that I'd turn and run off.

Like I'd been doing these past few weeks.

He stopped when he was a few paces away, hands tucked into his pockets. "Hey, Carnation." We hadn't talked since that day in the Pavilion, and it felt odd to have this.....distance between us now.

"Hi, Luka," I said softly, sadly. If the situation hadn't been so heavy, it would have been comical, really. Here I was, resolutely having decided to avoid him, and here he showed up, determined to find me. Ironic. The Goddess of Fate was back to her tricks again, it seemed.

He was dressed in black pants and a well-fitting shirt, and his gaze was shy, hesitant, and unsure. "You've been avoiding me."

"I've been avoiding everyone." I said evasively. "Were you looking for something?"

"For someone. You."

I looked up at that, and turned away so I was facing the bookshelf. "I'm here. Whatever of me is left." Ah, that sounded really bitter.

"Yes, you," He said, and I flinched because he sounded really, really close behind me. What was he doing? "All of you." His voice was slow, as though he was trying to find the right words but didn't know how. "I was terrified when you wouldn't wake up. I thought.....you'd.....vanished without-without a chance to know what I felt. How I feel."

"Remember that night? After the campfire?" He said after a pause fraught with strange, heart-clenching sensations. "I asked you something- well, tried to force it out from you, actually- and I'm here to amend for that." The silence was loud, deafeningly so, and my heartbeat was the loudest sound in this narrow, closed-off space between us. "Do you....want to hear it?"