Taint, Time and Tangents✔️

≑ Chapter Thirty One

To, CLM615, for your relentless support. :)

∞ 31 ∞

PHOEBE

It was at that second, when an icy spear was pierced into my chest, hitting my heart and ripping my life in front of my eyes... it was then when I tasted it.

The savor of an unforeseen death.

Strangely though, even when my left arm was almost tearing off from its joint just a few seconds ago, I didn't perceive any tint of pain. I was not feeling anything anymore. Everything just went numb.

And all I see was her.

My lifeless eyes just fixed on her.

The girl lying on the ground. Callie.

She was staring at me, bathed with blood and shivering. She was a mess - her face splattered with mud, her clothes torn and her limbs splayed in an awkward angle.

Her eyes, however, were not in pain or anguish. They were just looking back at mine, burrowing, with drops of water languidly trickling from their corners.

Callie was crying. Is it because of me?

My heart ached as my eyes glided towards her hair, those red strands pricking her forehead, mouth and cheeks. Her hair was now short – its longest strands barely glazed her shoulders. She still, however, looked very striking on that hair, maybe even prettier than before.

Whatever I do, she will always be beautiful in everyone's eyes. Even mine.

And now, even in the King's eyes.

But Callie, even with all the guys going crazy for her, never mentioned about it once. I always waited for her to at least ask about guys.

But she never did.

And Keenan also never bothered.

Keenan and Callie never mentioned anything. It simply never mattered to them. Because, in the ocean of admiring looks, it was the eyes of each other they were always yearning for and no one else.

His apathetic sapphire eyes to her gentle brown ones.

After all that happened, I realized she was someone I've always wanted to be.

The resentment and jealousy, it all stemmed at the harrowing reality that even how much I struggled, I would never be her in the eyes of Keenan.

I could never become like her.

Because Callie was born to love and be loved. She was so good and all she did was to accept and cherish.

She didn't tell a single soul about what I did. She didn't even ask for an apology. She didn't left me on that building and gripped those wires until her hands bled, trying to make me go with her. And now, she was here again, heavily wounded, and was crying - pleading with her eyes, as she stared at me from a distance.

Callie, how can someone's heart be as pure as yours?

I looked up, my eyes crawling its way towards the night sky, through the curling leaves... to the stars and to the eclipse above.

It was a nice night, should have been a typical one. It was just a single date in the calendar, a simple 24-hours in a person's life, but only a meager change of stroke occurred in fate's penmanship, a sudden flick in the sturdy knots of time and an innocent confluence of black strings of life, made it something special for someone.