✓ dark blue -h.s. au- short story

2 "being trapped inside."

H A R R Y

Harry is standing on the shore of an ocean. It's really late outside and he'd been walking for hours without end before stopping at the shore and just staring at the water.

It looks dangerous. A sheer blanket of thin ice covering the waves and making them seem remote. He doesn't like that it looks like a still-picture. He also doesn't like that there's a girl standing on the dock with her head down and shoulders shaking.

He reaches her faster than should be possible so it only takes seconds for him to get to her. It only takes seconds for him to look at her and know something is wrong.

She has this really long hair that looks like washed brown, and these shaking pair of hands that she's hiding by tightening her arms around her chest, and her eyes- it takes him a second to appreciate the gray of her eyes. It's gray, but there's a subtle blue to the irises.

Her eyes make him think of Atlantis. They make him think of cold, blue water and people who live under it. They make him think of mythical mermaids and how majestic they are. He thinks she would have been a mermaid in another life.

She's looking at him, though, and she looks pretty numb and cold even though she's wearing a sweatshirt. Harry doesn't really recognize it enough, but it looks like something he'd own.

She takes one small step forward and he feels his skin burn. His skin burns with that feeling you get when your mind is trying to help you out.

Because her name doesn't ring a bell in his head. No, it creates a whole orchestra of drums and pianos, and even that one triangle tune that he never thought was important. He hears her name in his head like he's always known it, though he knows he's never seen her before. Cecily, it calls to him in the darkest corners of his mind, and in the most obvious of places. His body shakes with a memory he can't find, and then her eyes lock onto his and he doesn't want to look away. Not yet at least.

She turns toward him and looks around before her gaze finally settles on him, her head tilting before she slowly stands to her feet and walks delicately toward him. He notices that she's trying not to look down at the water and thinks she must be afraid of it. Must be afraid of the ice and the dark blue it's covering.

"You're afraid of it," is the first thing he tells her.

The girl looks away, gaze now falling to the water. He thinks not having her eyes on him makes him feel warmer. Like all the cold between him and the universe is somehow stemmed from her. "I think I have nightmares."

He wants to try to warm her because the wind seems to be doing a pretty good job at keeping her fingers blue. "Yeah?"

"Nightmares of falling in and being trapped inside by the ice. Sometimes I feel like I wake up with water in my ears."

"People always come down here," he says quietly. "If you ever fall through, someone will get you out. Break through the ice."

She looks back at the ocean and shakes her head. He looks up at the sky and furrows his eyebrows, staring at the stars that seem to be moving. It looks like they're finding their places in the sky, their light going dim for just a moment before they come back. Like fireflies. "That'll take too long."

The stars are dancing, he thinks. They're dancing and swimming and jumping. But he can see one other star in the sea of all others that's glued to the sky. It looks frozen. It looks like the girl in front of him. "You come out here to scare yourself?"

"I don't know why I'm out here."

He reaches out for her shaking hands and holds them in his palms. "Maybe you should go someplace warmer."

Something cracks way beyond the darkness where the trees have found a home. They both turn their heads and Harry knows there's someone out there, probably hiding.

His grip on her cold fingers tighten and it takes a strain in his eyes to see that someone's lit a fire.

"I don't get warm very often," her voice reaches his ears.

He turns to look at her slowly, but she's no longer there and his hands have paused in the stale air around him.

He looks up at the sky at all of the stars. Frozen. Each and every one of them are frozen. Except one. One of them are dancing and swimming and jumping.

Then Harry looks down at the iced ocean and pretends there was no way she could have fallen in.

The name Cecily finds its way in his head again and he tries to keep his thoughts from making his headache worse.