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18 i don't know how but they found me
Cabeswater is everywhere around her. Mercy is quiet, leaning against Ronan's back with her own and sleepily resting her head on his shoulder. They long for the summer to continue, and so Cabeswater has given it to them: warm sunlight brightening the freckles dusting across her nose and cheeks, Mercy's bright eyes closed underneath the heat. It's the day after tea at Blue's house and the group is gathered within the confines of the forest to visit Aurora. The greenery hums underneath her , Mercy's blood bubbling and oozing in their veins. Cheek pressed into Ronan's tank top, she listens to her friends surrounding her.
Gansey, laying on his back and gazing up to the blue skies above, looks at home. "What is real?"
Mercy snorts, the sound hiding within the fabric of Ronan.
"Maybe," Blue begins, "we all come here and fall asleep and have the same dream."
Eyebrows furrowing, Mercy considers this. She wouldn't know the difference between asleep and awake; real and a dream, the lines beginning to blur and the distinctions becoming lost on her. Ronan picks at the grass.
"I know when I'm awake and when I'm asleep," he says.
Ronan is sharp underneath the sunlight. It becomes a knife against the cut of his cheeks. Mercy and Ronan fit together underneath the shadowed limbs of this forest—two jagged pieces jutting out of the dirt. Mercy opens her eyes, owlishly blinking at Adam Parrish and his greased coveralls.
"Do you?" Adam says, curling his hands into the coveralls.
Ronan makes a noise, ugly and mirthful from the depths of his throat. Where Mercy's ability to discern the difference is beginning to die, Ronan's ability fluctuates with his care. Ronan and Cabeswater are built of the same stone: the only way he couldn't tell the difference between waking and sleeping is if he didn't want to.
