Rebirth

Chapter 6

I don't open my eyes until long after I'm awake. I don't move, I barely even breathe. I simply lay on my lumpy bed and think and resist the urge to cry.

Me and Abarita, for the first few years we were inseparable, we had the same basic classes, English, Math, Food, Fighting, Growing, and Building. We would laugh and play, it didn't matter that we weren't great at anything, we were together. Then we stopped, the day we got our Test assessments, they said that Abarita would be best as a computer and I'd be best as a bullet. After that we didn't laugh, we didn't play, we left all those silly things behind. We still hung out, we knew too much about each other to let the other out of our sight forever. She knew I blamed myself for my mother's death and I knew that she wanted to destroy everything here for revenge for her sister. Every time we saw each other, that knowledge would hang over us like a dark cloud, so we drifted apart. She drifted to guys in the hope of finding her forever mate, me to myself for me.

And Danny. My only family. I hadn't gotten close to him since the day we arrived. I talked to him but I refused to love him. I refused to love anything ever again. I was afraid of being hurt that we again. Look where that got me, hurt and alone. Falling apart with no one who cares enough to put me back together.

Slowly I brake the seal on my eyes and dim light filters in through heavily tinted windows. I let my body stretch out into the dim light. I feel stiff and wooden, like my body was turned to stone.

"Are you okay?" Iden's voice flouts to me like a message in a bottle. I smile slowly, testing out how it feels, his voice is soft smooth like a pearl or sea glass. Once sharp and bringing fear, now gentle and beautiful. I turn my stone body, letting it soften back to flesh, to the sound of his voice and almost roll off the back seat of the car.

For a single second I slip, but his hand s are quickly around me. One on my shoulder the other on my hip. He gently moves me back against the back of the seat. Once he has me comfortable he moves so he's sitting between the two seats facing me.

"You look" he pauses looking me up and down, not with want but also not without caring, the way a doctor looks for broken bones "pale" he finishes. "You should eat something" he says handing me a bit of bread, accept it. I sit up a bit and nibble on it. I had forgotten how hungry I was and despite it being tough and a little stale I eat the entire thing. Iden watches me with soft brown eyes, the green on the edges growing and retreating as he watches. I look at his eyes over my piece of bread and imagine my mom's world where green life grows everywhere.

As I stare at his eyes though, something strange things starts to happen. Iden's form shifts and morphs into something else, something strange and yet familiar. He has become pale white with jet black hair and tall. He was the one who shocked me, the one who captured me. I bring my knees to my chest and reach for the gun in my waist band, but there is nothing there.

"I'm sorry" he says "I can explain" he says, reaching forward, I freeze. There is too little space, I'm defenseless and open for attack. He lays his warm hand on the side of my face, curling gently around my cheek.

"You wouldn't have trusted me before, if you had seen me as the person who captured you. I needed you to come with me. I needed for you to see the world as it was, I needed you on our side. I needed you to be open, and to do that I needed to hit you with reality. I needed you to realize you were broken, that the world is broken so that we can put it back together. I'm sorry, I really am." He says, his eyes grow greener until the brown is completely gone and the life is thriving in his ecosystem. "Do you believe me?" He asks pulling his hand away from my cheek moving to grip my hand. I sit up slowly so I can look him strait in the eyes. They are entirely green, but the shades change and shift, from light gentle green of starting to grow, to darker green of surviving hard time, to a tan green of ending part of life, but never brown. He squeezes my hand gently. "Do you trust me?"