March from Darkness | ✓ (to be edited)

TWELVE

When I came to, I was curled up into a tight ball, sobbing, mumbling incoherent, disconnected words that I couldn't even understand, with something warm wrapped tightly around my trembling form.

The next thing that registered was the fact that the warm thing was slowly rocking me back and forth, rubbing up and down my arm and in circles on my back. Then it was the sound of that something whispering words of soothing encouragement and telling me to relax in a low, deep voice.

And finally, the smell of freesia and eucalyptus penetrated my senses. I wanted to bath in those scents, be surrounded by them until the day I withered away into the nothingness of the universe.

I don't honestly understand how or why Phrer kept me here. I was a liability, had almost killed him twice, almost killed myself again, I guess, once, and constantly made life difficult in general. But, at this moment, I was glad he did.

The position I found myself in was kind of awkward, to say the least. I was situated in between his legs with one of his pressed firmly into mine, keeping them close to my body; my arms were wrapped tightly around my legs while his were wrapped around my upper body to keep them there; and his head rested on top of mine as his body pressed into my side. In a manner of seconds, I sat straddling his lap with my arms around his torso and my face pressed into his shoulder. "There you are," he said gently, rubbing circles into my back still as I tried to calm myself.

"I... I'm sorry. I just... I miss her so much that I have no idea what to do sometimes." And that was the truth. I missed Koralai, plain and simple. She had been the very air I had breathed, a light in the perpetual darkness that had been my life, a flower in a desolate garden. "That night, when I realized what had happened... my whole world stopped," I mumbled, my voice dull and unfeeling. "The one beautiful thing in my life had been killed because of the world I pulled her into. No matter what she had done, she didn't deserve to die. She wouldn't have met Dom, she would not have met me. She'd still be alive, Phrer."

He laced his fingers through my hair gently and pulled me away from his shoulder to look into my eyes. "Demitri, there is nothing that you could have done to save her. It all would have happened, whether with you or someone else. That was her destiny."

...the scroll.

The wayward thought was immediately sensed and I felt Phrer stiffen as his eyes widened in disbelief. "How do you know about the scroll?"

I looked down guiltily, my face hot with shame. "When we entered the library earlier, when you kept going, something distracted me. It was like a voice was whispering for me to follow it. I ended up going deeper into the library and found a little alcove with a bunch of scrolls and plaques. There was a scroll with Koralai's name on the plaque below it, but when I went to touch it, it burned my fingers and glowed from where they had touched. You just happened to find me and when I turned around, I was back in the middle of the library." When I looked up, I half expected him to be staring at me like I was insane, but since he knew about the scroll, the look of understanding and quite affirmation wasn't a surprise.

"It burned you?" he asked, genuinely seeming confused, even though it didn't show.

"Yeah, and then I heard something whisper 'Not yet' to me. But it wasn't in my ear, it was almost like it was... Me, I guess. But it didn't sound like me."

"I don't understand how you managed to find that alcove," he said quietly after a few moments. "Spirits aren't supposed to be able to access it."

That brought me pause, and before I could even think about what I was saying, it was out.

"Is it possible that I'm not a spirit? Or that there's something wrong with me? I mean, are spirits supposed to crave blood?" I asked, speaking rather quickly as all of the questions I had burning in my craw rushed out.