Starsinger

The Song

Sapphire drifted in a realm without shadows.

She was warm, and surrounded by colors that shifted like a fading sunset, swirling patiently into each other. It would have been peaceful, except for the singing.

The voices whispered in her mind, singing an old Song that felt at once totally familiar and impossibly foreign. No one told Sapphire that the Song was old, but it felt old, the way it echoed in her head like the ocean inside a seashell.

You have a choice to make.

She already made her choice. She chose him. Chose not-dying. Didn't she? She could almost remember it.

You have a choice to make.

Sapphire drifted with the Song and let it fill her. She couldn't see or hear, but she could feel the thrum of life as it beat like a thousand drums across the earth. She soaked in the unbound, unconquerable tragedy of the world. She shuddered with unshed tears.

You have a choice to make.

I chose. Sapphire remembered the lightning singeing her skin, remembered the taste of it, metallic and smokey on her tongue. I chose fire.

You are always fire, the Song whispered. You are always ash. You are both, or you are neither. It is not easy.

The colors twisted away and the world fluttered below like a reflection in a pond. Sapphire saw their faces: Jace. Delia. Raelyn. Her team. Her friends. A spark of longing shocked her fingertips.

Aaron, sitting in a pale white room. Brown hair sticking up at odd angles, fingers working in his bangs.

"You called me a coward once," he whispered to the sleeping figure in the enormous bed. "Because I was too afraid to say what I wanted. You were right. I ran away instead of talking to you. Hid from my fear."

He looked up and there were tears in his eyes and Sapphire choked as a spasm of pain wracked her chest.

"Well now who's hiding?" he asked. "I'm not afraid anymore, Sapphire. I know what I want. I want you to come back. I want you to choose this." Aaron buried his head in his hands. "Gods, I hope you choose this."

Then the world blew away like sand and she was clutching at it with invisible fingers, begging it to stay.

The Song murmured inside her head. Are you fire or are you ash?

Sapphire grit her teeth. I am both.

It is not easy, warned the Song.

I don't choose easy.

There was a sound like laughter or like wind through icicles and then Sapphire was rising, a bubble floating to the surface, ready to burst.

She opened her eyes.

THE END