Fading Away

Chapter Six

 I want to explore. "Eternity, do you want to wander around?" I ask him.

"Sure!" he replies. "Pick a direction."

I look around and start walking towards a dense area of the forest.

"Stay away from humans!" Wonders calls after us. He's just come out.

"There aren't any humans around here," Eternity laughs, linking arms with me. We take off at a running pace and plunge into the ocean of leaves and shadows and earth. We keep up our quick pace, racing through the undergrowth. My thoughts and stresses slip away as I get lost in the now: being happy and being with Eternity.

I lose track of how long we race for. Eventually we find a patch of soft grass and lay on our backs, looking up at the leafy branches waving hello in the wind.

"This place is beautiful," I sigh happily, breathing deeply.

Eternity laces his fingers with mine. "I wish we could stay like this forever," he murmurs.

I smile. "Me, too." I pause a moment. "Do you ever stop and think about how removed we are from this world?"

"Sure!" he replies, sitting partially upright so he gazes down at my face. "There's so much stuff, like aging for us being so different than humans, our abilities..."

"Yeah, but I meant in how we view the world. Humans focus on surviving, relationships, and getting stuff. Meanwhile we take time to lay in the grass to admire the treetops. We seek beauty in our lives."

"It's because we have so much longer than them," he says softly.

"But shouldn't they seek this world's beauty even more, then?" I cry, a little frustration showing through. "It's like they can't see its importance. I wish they could."

He squeezes my hand harder. "Hey, it's OK. We do what we can to help them. We can't bring everyone happiness."

"I wish we could," I mutter under my breath.

"It's past lunchtime," Eternity says suddenly. "We should start heading back."

I sit up and look around. A small rabbit scurries under a bush. "Eternity, do you know what your power is yet? Your ability?"

He tenses suddenly. "A little bit, yeah. I haven't told the others yet... not even Wonders knows much."

I blink in surprise. "Oh. Well, if you don't want to tell me, its OK."

He shakes his head, almost violently. "No, I want you to be sure I trust you, because I do and I'm sorry." His words tumble out of his mouth. "I feel awful for hurting you and-"

"I know," I interrupt. "I know you feel bad. I forgive you!"

He still looks guilty.

"You just have to forgive yourself," I add quietly.

He swallows. "Maybe you're right. Anyway, my power... It's all about how long things last, at this point in its development. If I want, I can see how long something will last. It's strange, to say the least."

"What about people?" I ask in alarm.

He grimaces and nods. "I don't choose to see that, though. I'm not sure what I'd do with knowledge like that. It wouldn't be fair."

"That's scary," I murmur.

"They're all scary," he cries suddenly. "You're going to see peoples' nightmares, Dream! Think about Secrets. She sees just about everything that's ever been that no one wanted anyone to know."

"Her head must be full of so much noise," I realize. The sensation of fear spreads through me swiftly. "Eternity... what if we don't want to use our powers?"

"Well, we can usually choose if we see things or not," he says thoughtfully.

I breathe a sigh of relief and relax a little. "You're right. OK."

He gives me an encouraging smile. "It's OK. We'll get through this together."

We've been walking as we talked. It's takes a lot longer to get back since we're not running anymore, but I don't mind slowing down to enjoy the scenery and Eternity's company.

After several minutes of surprisingly comfortable silence, I speak again. "Did you see how long we would last, Eternity?" I ask curiously.

He frowns slightly. "No... I didn't want to see that."

I nod. "Good."

"I did see something though..." Eternity says suddenly.

My head jerks. "What?"

"Our old planet. It's strange. I had a hard time reading it because it isn't inhabited so it registers as dead to my abilities. But when I see how long its going to last, I see its going to last a very, very long time."

"Interesting," I comment. "I wonder what that means."

He shrugs.

We near the clearing where we're staying. When we come out of the trees and into the open meadows, I see Wonders sitting on a boulder beneath a lonely tree.

"What are Wonder's abilities?" I ask Eternity.

"Hmm. I have no idea," he says, sounding surprised. "He's the oldest so his would likely be more developed than any of us."

Out of nowhere I think about Harper.

"What's wrong?" Eternity asks, noticing I've frozen where I stand.

"I... I feel like I should go see Harper," I say slowly. My thoughts feel like static and my heartbeat is accelerated.

"What?" he cries, stunned."I thought you were happy here! And its only been a couple days..."

"I know, I know," I say quickly, shaking my head to clear my thoughts. "I'm not sure why I'm thinking that. I keep getting this feeling that something's going wrong. But that doesn't make sense because everything was fine when I left. Things wouldn't change so quickly, would they?"

"It's highly unlikely," he soothes. "I'm sure its just hard for you to be separated from her. You really loved her, didn't you."

I sniff and nod.

"Now that's incredible. To grow to love someone as if they were your own, even though they never knew you existed."

"I faded to her," I say sadly. "When she was younger she looked right in my eyes, and she could see me. And then she grew up. She grew out of me. I was fading away to her for such a long time, now that I think about it, it was foolish and pointless for me to stick around as long as I did."

He brushes my arm with his hand. "It's alright. She'll be fine."

"You're probably right," I sigh, pushing my stresses about her away. I have plenty of other things to think about. Like what it'll be like to go home, to leave earth, to have powers, to fall in love, and to keep enjoying life.

Together, we head into our house to get some late lunch.

I stop thinking about Harper.

I do hope you enjoy. Just a head's up, everything's about to explode :)