Click. Snap. Click. Snap.
“You ever hear that saying, ‘If you’re going through hell, keep going’?”
The grass tangles in my hair as I shake my head, fingers wandering idly through the fallen leaves on the ground. Clouds are gathering just northeast of my line of sight.
Click. Snap.
“It was Winston Churchill who said it. It sounds a lot like something Shakespeare wrote in Macbeth, though.”
“What did Shakespeare write?” I ask. My voice has the faint huskiness of someone who had just woken up. Trystain pauses in playing with his lighter to think for a moment.
“Something like, ‘If I’m walking through a river of blood, I can either turn around or keep walking until I come out on the other side.’”
“Well, obviously…”
“What it means,” Trystain amends, clicking the lighter on again, “is that if you’re dealing with guilt you can either come clean about it or keep walking through the muck and grime until there’s no one left to confront you about it.”
I furrow my brows at the clouds, the lighter clicking and snapping in Trystain’s hand, and then let my head loll to the side to look at him. “What if no one is confronting you about it?”
“There’s always someone.” Click. Snap. “In your case, you.”
“And you.”
Tryss chuckles and turns an amused eye on me. “When did I ever confront you?”
“I meant you confront yourself too.”
His smile fades, and he stops playing with the lighter for a moment. I hold his gaze for a little while before I turn back to the sky, even though I can still feel his eyes on me for a few minutes after I’ve turned away. The clicks and snaps resume.
“Hey, Tryss?” He grunts in acknowledgement. “Do you think we’ll get through this?”
Click.
He doesn’t reply or snap the lid back over the lighter, so I turn my head again to look at him. The tongue of flame sprouting from the lighter quivers, as though it is nervous to be the only real flame among leaves counterfeiting as falling embers.
“This actually used to be mine.” Tryss motions at the lighter. “I kind of wanted to get rid of it since I wasn’t human anymore, but I needed something to light my doobies. At least, until I found out I don’t get high anymore.”
I roll my eyes inwardly. “Right.”
“I’m glad I still have it, even though I don’t use it.”
“Until today,” I correct him.
“If you’re going to be a smartass, I can just leave you here.”
“Don’t do that,” I groan, rolling towards him to grasp the edge of his shirt. “I still don’t think I can walk home. You took way more blood than you needed to.”
“Well, you were offering, so I thought I might as well,” he shrugs. I give him my best smack on the arm and get shoved to the side like a rag doll for my efforts. He still hasn’t answered my question, but I don’t pressure him for it. Instead, I ask a new one.
“Tryss, about Helen…” I pronounce the name gingerly, as if it could produce an explosive reaction (which, judging by the tightening of his mouth, it is liable to do). “What happened to her? Where did she go after you left?”
