Ya'aburnee

Chapter 13: What We Risk For Others

CIA 

Is the weather a reflection of my mood?

I am starting to believe so.

The morning of today, the sun didn't once peek through, its light not shining down onto the world.
No, the world was surrounded by heavy grey clouds, promising rain, carrying it around for a few hours and once I stepped out of my school's building, it poured down from above as if it had only been waiting on me.

I gaze up.

The sky is wild. Clouds have darkened, a murky layer hanging in midst the atmosphere and the rain feels sharp on the skin that is bared. When clouds collide, a thunder rumbles through the island and my body shivers at the uncanny sight.

It feels like my body awakens and comes alive.

Through watching the sky scream and suffer, I start thinking to be doing it myself as if I am letting out the fury that has built up inside of me.
There is a burning fire in my chest that is slowly put out and the rain calms the fiery sensation behind my lids.

This is new land for me.

No one has ever made me feel like my insides were set on fire.
No one has even ever been the one to ignite the flames themselves.
Why did he?

I don't like it. My chest raises and falls sharply, clothes soaking up water, sticking to skin. A strong wind blows past me, causing the hair to stand on its end, goosebumps to appear like a second skin on arms and legs. The sudden chilly drop of temperature is a reminder of mother's words that I can practically hear her saying from the other side of the universe.

Cia, dear, put on a jacket and don't stand soaked in the cold. You'll get terribly sick.

I don't need to hear them in real life. The echo in my thoughts is enough for me to hurry toward my motorcycle, throw one leg over before I clamp my hands around the handles and the push on the gas vaults me forward.

300 knives dig into every part of skin. At least, that's what the cold wind feels like as I cut through it like a viper. I know I should slow down, I can hear my mother ordering me to slow down but my foot never lifts off the pedal, it's attached and the pressure is only increasing.

I can't help but speed.

Elliott is at fault.

He connected the match to the gasoline that courses through my veins like poison.

I have to erase that flames before I reach Elijah's house.

VII

House?
House?
Yeah, it can't be.

Where the map on my watch has led me to, the address Neirin gave me, is a place that has me gawking and staring like a blind person that gets to see the world for the first time. I stand in midst of an ascending dust cloud caused by the drift of my bike but it isn't why I am blinking a hundred times a second.

Did they say house? If so, I think it is time for me to give Neirin's definition of what a house is an update.
What towers up in front of me does abso-bloody-lutely not fall into this category.

Palace, maybe.
Palace does it justice.

The rain stopped pouring down mid-drive, the heavy falling of droplets turning to barely palpable ones before disappearing fully. Yet the thunder and lightning give no rest even as I park my bike in the empty space next to a car only a few exceptions can get their hands on. When said exceptions, then meant are people of unlimited wealth.