cascade | kotlc

17. Rewind: Exposition

don't hate me

-  F. V.

Blue light jerked his eyes open.

"That worked," were the first words that slipped out of his mouth. Then they were immediately followed by, "June, are you alright?"

The girl sagged into his shoulder, her lips bit too tight for her to respond.

Fitz surveyed the room.

It was the same old Healing Center he'd practically memorized during his recovery, the doors and the cots and the lights. Faye was sitting opposite them with her arms crossed, her eyebrow raised arrogantly.

"Care to tell me what just happened?" she asked.

The wind battering outside stilled so suddenly Fitz could hear a pin drop in Elwin's office as June swallowed loudly. Her hand wrapped around his again, taut like a frayed rope, and she was tugging on her arm. Not demandingly or insistently, but a plea for him to remain silent.

"I told you about my life," Faye mumbled. "Can't you please tell me?"

After those words the room fell into a deathly silence, eerily empty except for June's nervous fidgeting with her skirt and the sound of crackling electricity over Faye's fingertips. It was moments like this he wished he could hear the familiar tick-tock again to spare him from the awkwardness.

"I'm sorry," June muttered. "I'll tell you everything."
Faye smiled as the girls huddled together in a corner of a room, and June's mouth began to open, recounting her story. And Fitz listened in too from the sidelines, his hand planted firmly on June's shoulder.

Recount her story June did, and every detail was filled with lament. June's tone was sorrowful, as if she was peering into a half-broken mirror and examining her own shattered reflection.

"I can't describe it," June said morosely. "You can never describe the existence of nothingness. I sat there, in that room, eating goo and drinking broth, which tasted heavenly might I add, but it was... boring. Impossibly boring. And definitely not good for my social or mental health."

But latent in her words, her syllables, were songs of hope. Of potential futures, of uprising from the past. And of making the best of the present.

When she reached her early teen years she almost broke into tears when she described her first outing at Foxfire. How the campus with the glass pyramid and spiraling gold and silver towers had caught her attention.

"I've never seen anything like it," she breathed, her voice holding every bit of awe as it would've three years ago. "And- I saw people. Boys and girls and their youthful faces, those smiles etched onto her lips" -- she shook with a delighted muffled sob -- "it was so real."

"What a wonder it must've been," Faye said. "For me it was more of a ceremony. I certainly wasn't expecting to be admitted into Foxfire either."

A faint smile licked onto June's face. "You shut up."

"Shutting up now."

"Anyways," June continued. "It was human interaction. I made friends. Juline introduced me to Dex one day after school. I found Marella a couple days after, when I was about to sit with ogling boys. And, of course..."

She turned to Fitz and smiled widely.

"Dad decided to introduce me to Alden."

Something in Faye's emotion shifted as her shoulders tightened and her smile hardened into a crooked line. Energy hummed on her pink-tinted cheeks. "Oh, of course... that's great."