Obsidian ㅡ twilight saga

1. forever

[0.1] C H A P T E R  O N E

     Life has been in love with death since the beginning of time. Every minute life sends countless gifts to death, and death keeps them forever.

I will never be among those gifts.

I close the leatherback journal and slip the elastic around the cover, securing all the words that seem to flow over the tarred edges of the pages to a uniform picture of hidden ink and secrecy. I put both the journal and the half used pen into the pocket of the inner lining of my jacket, the only safe place for my thoughts.

Lacing my hands in my lap I stare up into the sky, all inky and gray blots of clouds as I approximate the probability of forever, and how cruel that probability is. It's been three  years today. August-second. I should be nineteen.

Technically, I am nineteen, but the preternaturally well preserved flesh cage I'm living in doesn't vouch for it. I haven't aged a day over sixteen, and I'm not really sure if you can even call this living. I may as well be dead. I feel dead.

Hypothetically speaking, I am dead. No heartbeat. I am, essentially, a walking corpse. And I will be like this for what is probably going to be a very long time. Too long.

What a concept forever is.

Distant shouts sever the ties from me and my mind and reality settles into focus around me. The forest is looking particularly somber at this hour, downcast clouds forecasting rain at any moment. Some more hollering dispersing into echoes along the trunks of old pine trees. The others are hunting. I...opted out.

Annie thinks I'm depressed. Uriel thinks I'm just stubborn. Joseph thinks I'm not adjusting. And I'm sure the other three have their own theories about my disconnect. I don't bother trying to explain myself anymore; I've run out of vague ways to say I'd wish they'd have left me to bleed out on the side of the highway three years ago. But, let bygones be bygones and all that.

"Writing in that stupid journal all day isn't going to feed you, you half wit."

I look up to find Uriel standing on a high branch, peering down at me with a patronizing smirk. I roll my eyes so hard I think I see my brain.

"Words are food for the soul, meat for brains."

"We don't have souls, babe."

I squint up from my place on a moss-covered log as the curly haired, perpetually eighteen year old jumps down into the brush. His smile is a darker shade of red than usual as he saunters over.