The Broken Crystal

Chapter Twenty Three

By the time Crystal and the others excited the institution, the world had taken a bath. It was standing naked behind evaporated shower curtains, making everything gray and smoky and much, much harder to spot.

Which was excellent.

And horrible.

The guards running behind them were just conscious thoughts with bullets the form of angry shouts. No one could risk hurting Crystal Werimont and only ghosts would be able to see through the choking fog.

Unfortunately, Crystal wasn't a ghost. Not yet, at least.

They speeded up. Crystal. Dean. Evanna. Ricky. Blake with Xavier in his arms. Crystal couldn't help but think how the boy would soon be able to see through the world's vapour and her hopes that'd just become one with the thick, thick fog. Involuntary, her pace quickened, before she realized she was no longer able to see anything or anyone. People were trees and trees were traps. The sun was an ancient smell. The flowers nothing but faded memorials.

The world had turned into a trick that made her stumble and wheeze and search and turn and run and run and run.

And fight.

For, when two not wooden, but rubber stems grabbed her body, Crystal whirled around, freeing her hand and clawing her attacker in the face. The girl was just about to deliver a punch so hard it'd knock the person off their feet, when:

"Ouch, stop, Crystal, stop!"

The rubber stems were parts of a familiar trunk. Leaves stared at her. Green leaves; summer's finest trademark. And Dean's, too.

Once the boy was sure Crystal wouldn't attack again, he lay one hand on her shoulder, turning her to the right or left or any of the directions that'd gotten burned to ashes in this smoke-filled world. With his finger he pointed towards... something.

Crystal had never thought the warmth of human skin could feel so unfitting, so strange. And yet, the touch of a fallen rain-cloud was somehow much more soothing. Shaking her head, the girl narrowed her eyes and straightened their sight and-

Nothing...

Then a contour...

And then, like a phoenix, a house rose from all the smoke and ashes. So did the old gas station beside it. Something about the two buildings reminded Crystal of an elderly couple, with bent backs and walking sticks and intertwined hands.

"We need to go there," Dean said.

And so they did.

The others waited at them by the entrance. Once Crystal spotted the glass-made, no, the air-made door, she couldn't believe she'd ever compared this house to a newborn phoenix. Someone had broken all of its breakable parts and scratched all of the scratchable ones. The building was dying. Did that mean it could see through the fog?

"Where are we?" the girl asked.

"A hotel."

Ahotel. Six empty letters. Although... Although they didn't really bother Crystal anymore. Because with every question came surprise, then triumph. Someday she would fill every letter with handfuls of meaning. Someday. But not now. No, she couldn't begin her new life in a dying house and a dying friend by her side.

With a confident hand, she pushed what was left of the front door open. Xavier's grunts blended with the wood's scream as Blake ran past the threshold, the empty desk, the stairs, stairs, stairs, stairs and the next do-