"Babe?"
Ashylnn's voice cut through Noah's fog and haze. He was standing, holding an axe, about to chop wood. She was sitting, legs dangling, off the front porch of a cabin in the woods which apparently belonged to him. He remembered that. His consciousness fully formed inside of this form of himself, and he smiled at her.
"Yes, my beloved?" His breath condensed into white puff before him. His voice dripped with an undefinable emotion. It wasn't a good one, he ignored that much.
"I called you four times, are you alright?" She looked at him, unresponsive to the nickname which always made her smile.
"Of course I'm alright, I'm with you after all."
She rolls her eyes at him, chuckling. "Oh, cut the flirting and get to chopping. This house isn't going to heat itself." She hops off the railing of the porch and pecks him on the cheek. "I'll be on the perimeter checking our snares if you need me." She walks away like they do this every day.
He's remembering the cabin. The cozy, warm fireplace they sit in front of during the wintery nights. The snares they had to set to catch their protein filled meals. The event which brought them together.
He got to chopping the wood as his lover asked him to, doing it more efficiently then he thought. More and more memories flooded one by one into his mind as he got through chopping all of the logs. He picked up a few, taking them inside to start the fireplace. Close to dinner time, when the sun left the sky and the smoke could be hidden. That was his idea, he knew, for he was a survivalist. Is a survivalist?
The logs rolled out of his hands as he lit the fire in reflex. He poked it around, and soon the warmth could be felt in his face. This all felt normal. So comfortably normal.
It was the domestic life he needed. The life he craved each day. Just them, alone together, by the fireplace after a day of work.
But comfort and domesticity were dirty words to Noah.
Hope being even dirtier.
He sat in front of the fire for a long moment, his eyes being captured by the flames. This was nice. Peaceful, even. The insanity of his mind was put to rest for a minute. The need for his drugs, the guilt he felt for Allister, the non erasable urge to hold his beloved again. It all quelled in his mind. Some part of him believed it was gone forever.
His trance was broken by Ashlynn opening and closing the door to the cabin. He could feel her silently come up behind him and give him a hug.
"You okay, Noey?" She asked, muffled by his back.
"I'm perfectly fine, darling." He responded, turning around and hugging her fully. She wrapped her arms around him naturally. They fit together so well. So easily.
She swayed gently back and forth as they embraced, taking in his scent. "It feels like I just got you back. You've been acting so out of it today." She looked up at him, her eyes reading his like a children's book. "You're guilty about something." She stated matter of factly.
"Yes, guilty as charged for not loving you enough." He responded smoothly. If only it was smooth enough to cover up what he was truly feeling.
"Noah, cut the crap." She warned. "What is going on in that head of yours?"
He wanted to spill everything that happened. Or everything he imagined. He wanted so badly to reveal himself completely to the one he loved before he lost her again. Before the universe ripped her away from him. Taking away an addict's next hit before he was administered to rehab. He wanted to be vulnerable.
And that's exactly what he did.
"I killed my best friend twice."
He looked dead into her eyes as he said it. His nerves stood on end, waiting for the negative reaction. The repulsive look as she shoved him away from her. But she only chuckled.
"Who? Allister? Babe, he got captured by the induction school and went full native. They brainwashed him. He sacrificed himself to save us." She paused to take in his confused expression. "Are you forgetting things already?" She chuckled again. "I knew you were an old soul, but not dementia old." She slipped out of his embrace, walking to the kitchen. He followed.
"So, Allister isn't dead?" He asked warily.
"Does he still have a pulse? Yes, last time we checked." She went to the cabinet to grab items for dinner. "Is he alive anymore? No. Now put your guard back up, your emotions are oozing." She starts preparing dinner with two of the rabbits she scored from the snares. Noah still stood there, confused and relieved. This new...reality of his didn't seem so bad. He had Ashlynn, Allister isn't dead, and no one is out to get him.
"One last question."
"Hmm?" Ashlynn hums.
"Where's Valerie?"
Ashlynn pauses for a moment, taking a breath.
"You mean your mother?" She turns to face him slowly. "Did you hit your head?" She asks, half joking.
"I don't think so." He responds, still needing the answer from his previous question.
"Noey, she's gone. Do you remember that day in the woods, the second day of freedom, and she found us?"
He stays silent as the memories slowly spill through a hole in the dam.
She continues. "You two haven't seen each other in God knows how long, and she took us in. You two reconnected, and she grew to love me. She stopped calling me 'the girl' after a while." She sighed. "We had our guards down, and that's when the soldiers attacked. Your mother fought hard, and she paved an escape for us. Then we were separated for a long time." She took her eyes off the void and looked into his eyes. "After what felt like a year, you found me, and we've been living here ever since." She blinked tears away, quickly turning back to her cooking. "Go get some medicine or something, I think you have memory loss."
He walked away silently. His entire world was ripped up before his eyes. He stormed out the door, trying to get his breathing back to normal. He looked up to the sky, a few constellations saying hello, before looking back down.
The cabin changed to his own. The landscape looked sickly familiar. The stargazing spot was still there, his cabin still tattered and dirty.
He stopped breathing for a second. Everything was spinning.
He looked up to the stars again, more constellations forming, then back down.
He saw his best friend dying before his eyes. The wendigo walked away in victory.
The scream was clogged in his throat as he watched his best friend bleed out. He walked close to him, seeing his smile and hearing his last words.
"Noey, you son of a bitch, I hope you got your girl."
His smile faded as his last breath left his body. Noah couldn't take seeing his eyes go blank.
He looked up again, the night sky beautifully clustered, then looked down to earth one last time.
He saw his Ashlynn on the front porch with a flashlight looking for him. She called his name once, before seeing his shadow in the grass.
"Noey!" She called, racing down the steps. "It's two am, where have you been?!"
He got one last look at his gorgeous, jaded Ashlynn before the world spun again, and he fell into his stargazing spot, face first, with a bullet in his back.
YOU ARE READING
All I Have Are the Stars
Fantasy"'I tell the stars about you' Ashlynn broke the silence after they had both been staring at the sky for an ungodly amount of time." Nothing has ever gone right for Noah, it never has. The only time he's had hope was when Ashlynn, his beloved, was st...
