Memories of a Traitorous Paradise

Chapter Two

They say time flies when you're having fun. Hours feel like minutes, minutes feel like seconds, seconds are nothing. My heart had been beating at a more or less steady rate since the day I was born, nothing able to speed it up or excite me as much as having mothers special roast on a Sunday could. Everything had always been almost a constant routine no one dared break.
But this...
This was different.
It was a feeling I had never felt before.
I had never felt large gusts of wind whipping though my hair like this, or the damp sea spray completely soaking my face. I had never been able to dip my toes in the water or fly up through the clouds. I felt the sun beating down on my cheeks up close, as if I could reach out and touch it. I could fly with the birds or dive with the Dolphins. It was a feeling beyond words, too great to imagine and yet there I was.
I loved it.
The water was seeping through my shoes and socks as I walked across the waves, keeping myself up by the gentle flutter of my wings behind me. Ahead of me, Vallisyn disappeared under the water and reappeared shortly after, causing giant ripples for me to jump over and spraying ocean on more ocean. His face glowed with happiness brighter than the sun, as if this is all he had ever wanted to do, but never gotten the chance to.
I stopped for a moment to wonder if that's what I looked like to him.
That's when my heart started racing.
I couldn't take my eyes off him as I watched him free in the never ending. My heart felt something it never had before, something scary that at first I didn't like. He just looked so happy, so cute, so beautiful, so-
I shook my head, trying to shake off the feeling. This guy was just another one of mothers dashed hopes, forgotten about tomorrow. He was no different to all the other men she'd picked up from the streets. But it was becoming difficult not to smile softly at the innocence radiating off a face that a few minutes ago looked mildly sadistic. I bit my lip slightly as he noticed my stare, smiling back at me. There must've been something in the way I looked at him that made his lip curl into that frighteningly hot smirk once again. "Are you enjoying yourself, Miss. Arramist?" He asked, in a mockingly polite tone. "You seem to be deep in thought."
I shook my head, meeting his eyes and froze for a second, balancing on a single droplet of water. Part of me wanted to stay in that moment forever, just us staring into each other's eyes whilst the ocean danced around us. But you can't have happiness without paying for it, and the painful truth of reality struck me in that second like a bullet.
Just like the bullet struck him.
I could practically see the searing pain run through his body as the cloth tore upon his shoulder, along with his gentle skin, and his strong formation slowly fell as another, then another came flying down. I felt my heart race even quicker than it was, probably too fast to be healthy as I watched in fear and shock. As bullet after bullet rained down on him, each one leaving him no time to react, my mind snapped out of its trance and I dived under the water, pulling him with me. I knew it wasn't the best idea, but I dived down fairy deep and started swimming anyway, making sure to grip Vallisyn's arm tightly in hope that I could lose whoever it was firing the gun.
But I couldn't hold my breath for very long, and I felt myself beginning to strain and struggle for breaths, swimming as fast as I could, only hoping I'd made it far enough away, before bringing myself to the surface and inhaling the air deeply. Vallisyn, too, strained for breaths, clutching one shoulder tightly as the other one bled out into the water. I looked around in desperate search of the mainland, but true to words we were completely stranded in the middle of the ocean. I bit my lip, probably too hard, embracing Vallisyn in a tight hug and pulling him up and out of the water using my drenched wings. I propelled myself high into the sky and again looked around, this time noticing a small clump of land not far and spent no time thinking about it.
Multiple shivers crashed through me despite the temperature being above 15 degrees when I gently lay Vallisyn down on the sand. The island wasn't very big, and I feared the worst as his blood stained single grains. I'd never known anyone to be this badly injured before; I'd never seen more than a child's graze, and needless to say I had no experience in medical. My mind span in so many directions I didn't want it to spin in, and part of me felt unbelievably dizzy.
So many questions.
So little answers.
And all so quickly. It was weird, and a bit discomforting, to think that just three minutes ago I was the happiest I'd been in my entire lifetime. But I couldn't let myself be distracted any more than I was, for I could hear Vallisyn's breaths become more hitched and pained and I couldn't bare the thought of losing him. His eyes, once sparkling, looked up at me with a look that made my heart shatter. He smiled, as softly as he could manage, and mouthed something I didn't quite catch. He wasn't panicking, which just made me panic even more.
It was painfully obvious this had happened to him before.
I couldn't leave him, not like this, but with no help on the island, what else could I do?
It was either a risk or a certainty.
With a shaky sigh, I told him "I'll be five minutes. Less than that... Just, hold on for me, please, I'm gonna go get help." I saw fear flash through his eyes, but only for a split second as he nodded, weakly. So off I went, flying faster than I ever had done before, over the ocean I had loved, but now seemed like an endless trap. And needless to say, I had no idea where I was going. I hadn't been paying attention to the direction.
At the time, there was no point.
A decision I'd regret.