Wings Of Fire As Humans ~ 4 ~ {MOONBLI}

[18] Case Closed

^Moon^

I was trapped in that white space for hours, occasionally glancing at the ground to see the present happening and calculate how long it'd take before I'd wake up. The insanity effect from mere hours ago had worn off, and I was left reminiscing and trying to piece everything together. Eventually, after however many hours had passed, light footsteps occupied my ears. By this time I had my head shoved into the knees and didn't bother looking up, already knowing it was my mind playing tricks on me. But then there was a voice.

"Hello again, Moon."

I let out a breathy laugh into my knees. "You're just a figment of my imagination, aren't you?" I didn't bother looking up.

There was a light chuckle. "Why do you fancy yourself mad, Moon?" And honestly, I seriously considered it. "This is nothing compared to most. Why don't you look at me?" Now that, that was a wonderful question. Perhaps I was more afraid of the unknown rather than being curious about this new presence, but still, a part of me felt compelled to look, and so I did.

I knew it. The voice was so familiar it could only belong to one person: Darkstalker. He looked exactly like how he did the last time I saw him—the day he died. Same disheveled hair and light freckles dotting his face. Except this time there weren't any of the black cracks splintering up his face. He also looked younger, calmer, his hands pocketed and a small smile playing on his lips. I laughed at myself again and reburied my head in my knees.

"Go away, you."

"Me?"

"You're dead." I was saying it more to myself than to him, as if to remind myself that there was no possible way for this to be happening, for him to be here. But then again, a lot of the things I've experienced seemed impossible to any other normal human.

"If that's what you would like to believe, then sure, say that I am dead." I felt the nonexistent air shift beside me as Darkstalker sat down a foot from me. "But if I am not, aren't you curious? Don't you have questions?"

I did have questions, but I felt silly asking any. I pushed my pride down and lifted my head to peek at him from the folds of my arms. "Are you saying that you aren't?"

"I'm not saying anything." I pursed my lips at this and lifted my head fully.

"Why are you being so roundabout? Tell me what it is you want me to know." And there I was, talking to a dead man. A man I watched explode into dust before my very eyes. I truly have gone mad. And then my lips stretched out into a small smile.

"Is there something you want to know?" Darkstalker didn't look away once, his obsidian eyes glinting with anticipation as the present played below us. That was a good question, and I turned away to think about it. There were a lot of things I wanted to know. Qibli's apparent demise that was dictated by the smallest of actions. Leopard's unnatural obsession with not only me, but revenge (his vindictive spirit was almost commendable). And then there was me, my children, and our happiness. Would we ever be able to find it? If so, when? How long until somebody would rid Leopard from our lives?

But I didn't ask any of those questions. Instead, I asked the one that was furthest from my mind.

"Darkstalker, what will the future look like for me?" It was one that had quite an ambiguous answer, and one I could easily learn for myself, but for some reason, I didn't want to. In the place I was trapped in, where I saw everything laid out before me, for the first time ever I truly saw why Qibli never wanted me studying the future. Because of this. Because of how insanity seeps into a person's mind when they know too much. I've only been exposed to this knowledge for a couple of hours, so studying it daily would make me lose parts of myself that I saw as sacred. This whole future-seeing business was a gamble, and in all honesty, I felt that Qibli was right.