The Elementalists

DAEMON

   It doesn't take me long to get there; our home wasn't very far from Angel's, and we buried her right outside of our home.

When I do get there, I immediately can tell it's her grave without bothering to look at the name—it's the only grave here, and the picture still rests in front of the gravestone.

I walk over and pick up the framed picture of the little girl. I stare at the picture of the girl with chin-length black hair, dark blue eyes, and a bright smile. In the picture, she's laughing.

I smile as I remember when we took that picture. Wayne couldn't figure out how to use the device that Time had given me years before—it was all so new. He kept repeating how, "I've never seen this, I bet she stole it from the future. Ugh, people shouldn't mess with the fabric of time!"

Lilly began laughing at him, and she'd said, "Wayne, try pushing that button!" Wayne did as he was told, and almost dropped the device when it emitted a bright flash. Then a picture of Lilly had appeared on the screen.

We took a lot of pictures that day. We left the camera on the fireplace overnight, and when we awoke, it was gone. In its place were paper copies of the pictures that we had taken.

It didn't take me long to figure out who had done this. It didn't take Wayne long, either, because he had screamed, "She screwed with the fabric of time again, damn it!"

Wayne...his grave should be around here somewhere. I close my eyes as I remember the boy who was always smiling—unless you pissed him off. I suppose you could say that I had inherited my swearing issue from him—it was something that I could use to hold onto my memories of him, something that would never let me forget him.

I shake the thoughts out of my head and walk over to the grave with the picture of my sister. Lilly...she was so little when she died.

But...I'm not here to visit her.

I set the picture down and begin to walk towards Wayne's grave. The reason I'm here is to thank Wayne for what he did a long time ago. I walk over to his grave and sit down before whispering, "Thank you for saving my life."

I look up at the sky and continue with, "You took a bullet for me, Wayne, and you lived on in Angel. He...he took a bullet for Mark."

I don't feel weird at all talking to the gravestone of my deceased friend. I used to come here and talk to them all of the time when I was alone. Loneliness...it gets to you.

I would come here every night and tell them everything that happened that day. It made me feel closer to them, every single one of them. I felt horrible that I was the one they had trusted to protect them, yet all of them had died protecting one another. I wasn't there for them when they needed me. It wasn't right for them to be dead and for me to still be alive...

And every three months for a year, I would return to find another person close to me had died, was hurt, or was caught. First was Lilly's death, then the news about Alisha's imprisonment, then Zayne's illness that caused a permanent limp on his left leg, and finally Cayce's death. Cayce, the Earth Elementalist, had given her life the day she had been brought into our home. She'd managed to stop our home from being crushed by a mudslide, but when she'd moved the mud elsewhere, she'd gotten trapped in the mud herself. And she'd died.

Wayne and I had buried her next to Lilly.

They were so young back then... I was so young back then... We shouldn't have tried surviving on our own...

Before I know what's happening, the memories begin to surface.

It's been three months since I left. I run the last few miles to my home, not caring if the other two are keeping up or not. I just want to see my sister—I've kept her waiting for far too long.