The Star and the Ocean (Book 1 in the Starborn Series)

Chapters Twenty-Nine & Thirty

[Author's Note: These chapters has been edited to adhere to Wattpad's "Everyone" rating. To read the uncensored version, check out the STARBORN MATURE CHAPTERS book on my profile]

May stepped carefully over a mess of underbrush and checked the map again as yet another question came to mind.

"What does being reborn feel like?"

From a few paces behind, Em laughed. "Thankfully, nothing like what I imagine being born normally feels like." She paused to consider a more serious answer. "It's like waking up from anesthesia after surgery. You're groggy and slow and it takes a while for things to start making sense."

"Does it hurt?"

"Nah."

This was how it had been in the days that followed their conversation on the cliff. May didn't want to ask her laundry list of questions all at once; she didn't want to be overbearing. Instead, she posed each one gradually, making her way through the muddled puzzle that was Em's story one piece at a time.

The only question she didn't have the stomach to ask was how it happened - how the woman once known as Audrey died in the first place, giving way to the person Em was now. Murder seemed self-explanatory enough, and given that Em wasn't offering up anything on the subject, May figured she made the right call keeping that question to herself.

Em had been happy to field every other query tossed her way. When May asked what she had been doing on the beach that night, Em did her best to explain.

"Remember when I told you my abilities are related to feeling and manipulating the energy around us? Sometimes being constantly connected to everything gets a bit overwhelming and I need a way to turn it all off. Have you heard of sensory deprivation?"

"No," May admitted, but she thought it sounded frightening.

"I sometimes use water as a crude means of blocking out my senses. It helps cut me off from the constantly bombarded of energy. I'm sure it's not easy to understand, but being submerged helps block the push and pull of the universe. It quiets all the noise just enough that it almost feels tranquil by comparison."

May hesitated before asking her next question, casting a furtive glance at Em before speaking.

"Welkin said something about your old memories... That sometimes Audrey's memories stir and it bothers you."

"Hmm." Em furrowed her brow. "It doesn't happen as much as it used to but sometimes I kind of... forget who I am for a second. It all comes screaming back to me for a moment or two and it throws me off." She looked guilty, squirming with discomfort. "Sometimes I wonder if it happens because they're thinking about her. Missing her."

"Who?" May asked, one part curious and another part horrified.

Em looked away. "Her friends. The people who loved her."

Of course. In a way it made sense that Em – hypersensitive to unseen forces as she was - might feel shockwaves of grief from Audrey's loved ones as they mourned her passing. The idea that Em could still feel the pangs from some shared broken heart made May's stomach lurch. Knowing that she so selfishly clung to someone others had no option but to miss...

But Em wasn't Audrey, that much she made clear. Audrey had been another person, and whomever had loved her once were nothing but memories to Em now. She didn't want to talk about them. In truth, neither did May, so she steered the conversation elsewhere.

"What's it like to be dead?"

"Ridiculously boring. And frustrating as fuck. I didn't have a body; I was just a thought, stuck in the same space for who knows how long."