The Burial of Saints

1: Reliving

She watched, invisible to those around her, as it happened. The faces were fuzzy. The only thing she could make out was her own figure, being held by another boy, around her age.

"Will you hold me until it's over?" Her other self whispered. 

She stood before the boy, while another man, a girl her age, and a younger girl, all stood around, watching. They stood on the roof of some building in the city.

The boy nodded. "Stab me, Eve. Let's put an end to everything."

The other Eve nodded back and reached her arms around the boy. She raised the katana in her hand, and slit her wrists with it, gasping it pain and dropping it.

"There was one more thing I didn't tell you... One last lie..." She whispered.

"What did you do? Eve!" He held her tighter.

"You were never... the Fourteenth."

"What?!" He exclaimed.

"I was... You were the Seed... That's why I always... killed you... and not myself..." 

The small girl said something, crying as she did, but Eve could not hear it. Her voice was muffled somehow.

Her other self looked up at the boy, looking weaker and weaker. "Kiss me," she whispered.

He nodded, and held her up as he kissed her. She smiled, and her body appeared more and more limp. She started to fall, as their lips parted. As she died, the dream began to disappear from Eve's eyes. It was like a fog descended upon her mind, and sealed it away. And that's when she woke up.

Groggily, she looked around her bedroom, at the violet walls and the vanity mirror tucked away between her two windows. She had a small beanbag chair in the middle of her room, for watching her big TV beside her beg. She threw off her warm, blue blanket, and stumbled out of bed in her underwear to her closet.

Absentmindedly, Eve gathered her clothes and dragged her feet out of her bedroom, and into the bathroom across the hall. She showered, got dressed, and dried her shoulder length blonde hair. She played with it in front of her vanity mirror. In the dream, her other self had long hair. But Eve never grew her hair out. Her mother didn't like it, for some reason.

She went downstairs, through the living room to the kitchen/dining room, and put some bread in the toaster.

Her mother, a tall woman with hair like her own, and similarly green eyes, turned from her cell phone and wished Eve a good morning.

The girl nodded and mumbled it back, stretching and yawning. She slipped her own phone in her pocket, and her house keys in the other.

"Remember Eve, you're going to your father's house after school today, ok?" her mother said.

Eve sighed. "I hate it at dad's. Karen is a bitch."

"Karen happens to be your stepmother," Eve's mom chastised. "Come on, it's not that bad."

"It is that bad! She's a prissy princess! When I'm there she expects everyone to wait on her, and I can't do anything I want because she makes me hang around her stupid little brat Jimmy," Eve complained, scowling.

Her mother smiled. "Tell you what sweetie. You go over there tonight, and you be good for Karen and your dad, and I'll call Uncle Cain and see about him giving you some more magic lessons tomorrow. Would you like that?"

Eve tried to keep her pout up, but she eventually cracked a smile. "Fine! Alright! But he better teach me something cool this time, not like last time."

Her mother gave her a little hug, and Eve's toast popped. She buttered it, grabbed her girly backpack, stuffed her pink laptop inside, and was out the door. 

She walked down the street to the corner, where half a dozen teenagers stood around looking bored. One of them, a girl with black pigtails, a white blouse, and a gothic black skirt, smiled and waved. Another boy, tall with short, curly hair, skin as brown as the other girl's was pale, put his arm around her and grinned at Eve.

"Yo, Hasan, Ray. What's up?" Eve called to them.

"Same old, bored as fuck, you?" Hasan said.

Eve shook her head. "Do you even have the right to be bored spending all morning every day with that pretty girl?"

Ray elbowed him in the ribs playfully. "Yeah, really! What a crappy boyfriend, sheesh." 

They all laughed, and the bus pulled up. Eve squeezed in with her friends at the back, and the bus began to move, picking up other students at other stops.

"So, tomorrow I'm gonna go see my uncle again! I'm gonna learn some new things," Eve said. "I'll show you guys as soon as I can!"

Ray smiled. "That's awesome!"

Hasan whispered to her - "What do you think he's gonna teach you?"

She shook her head. "I don't know. I've been meaning to ask him to show me flamecrafting, but I don't know if he will."

The bus pulled up to the front of her school, a three story building shaped like a 'P', with a large courtyard in the middle. Eve and the others got off, but as she did, she sensed something immensely powerful - some form of magic, close to her. She looked up, and saw someone standing on the roof. A boy, with a black hoodie and piercing green eyes.

He looked as if he was staring right at her. Ray called Eve's name, distracting her, and when she looked back at the roof, the boy was gone. She shook her head, and wondered if she was seeing things. Dismissing what she saw, she walked into the school with her friends.

The magic she sensed had disappeared.