Blaze

19. Irregularities of Nature

Her eyes are blue. Her hair is—

It takes me a moment of mouth-gaping to admit that she is Jackie.

The girl with the dark eyes is gone, as well as the lights in the distance.

It's still a night full of moons, and I'm still flat on my back, but my shoulders are healed (I don't wonder how) and before me stands Jackie.

Her expression is the softest thing I've ever seen—like it's been greased with the excess oil from rich laughter, and just finished drying in the sun.

She stands there and I say nothing.

Strange feelings—feelings I know shouldn't be mine—come alive within me. The urge for her to be here is unbearably strong. I need her to be here.

She came, I think to myself. Logic doesn't matter. Maybe, somehow, she really is here.

Maybe. 

That's the main thing. She came after me.

Austin.

Did Austin—?

She's gone.

---

It's day. It's a cold day. My eyes alternatively try to explain, then blink away, the sun. How much time did I spend in stasis, dreaming of Jackie? Why do I feel like I've somehow betrayed Austin?

Hours.

I don't feel groggy or sore. Tim, the bald man, leaving home, the edict, the map, Mother's tear, Austin's hug—all my memories seem to have shrunk and tumbled and blanched. I can only watch them through a tunnel.

"Get up. You need to start walking." The girl—she was crouching beside me and stands up now—pulls me to my feet. If anything, her eyes are even darker when there's light. I think it's the contrast. (There's a yellow tone to her skin.)

"You have to take up Ismael's job," she tells me. She walks steady and fast. I pant to keep up. We're alone, and the ground is flat and endless ahead. I still don't have my things, and I'm still shivering.

"You were someone else," is all I say. "You were someone I knew. My shoulders—"

"Are healed. I suppose you're going to ask me what you just ate?"

On reflex, I stare at my hands. Sure enough, the entire bread is gone—though I don't recall taking more than the one bite.

It tasted like blood!

"What did I just eat?" My thirst is still there, but it doesn't hurt. It doesn't hurt. For whatever reason, my throat is softer now.

She's amused. "I told you already. A piece of this earth."

That doesn't mean anything to me at all. I strain to keep up with her, to talk between my breaths.

"It came out of a well," she elaborates.

"A well?" I picture sweating children.

"Not all wells are for water."

Not all water is from wells.

"I would like some more," I say.

She stops cold. She puts two hands on either side of my face and holds it tightly in place. She rifles through my eyes.

She steps back.