Breathe

Chapter 19 - Overgrown Paradise

We traveled the outskirts of town, walking around the ruins of the suburbs that used to be. As we walked, I looked at the overgrown lawns, wrecked planks of wood, and shattered windows. Houses that used to be homes. Now, they're no more. All that laid in its place were overgrown fields of weeds, reaching up along the foundations of the homes, spreading themselves and gently touching them with each passing wind. And in them, there were crickets and fireflies, flying and buzzing within the green and casting a soft light like the stars to light what would have been our pathway if only people lived here.

Eventually, we arrived to a cliff and Eve stopped at a house. She lifted her head and looked at it. It towered higher than us—it looked almost as tall as the cliff itself.

It has been a while, I heard her think.

A while since what?

Since I have been here. She took a step towards the door. Going for the handle, she stopped once she noticed the hole in the door. Audibly, she sighed. It appears that they have gotten to this house as well. But not being too bothered enough by it, she turned the handle and said, "Oh well."

The door creaked open and she squinted inside. Surprisingly, the house was bare of any specks of dust—it almost looked like someone was living in it by the way the room was arranged the scattered newspapers and articles. The only things that made it seemed old and worn were the blanketed piano and slightly torn wallpaper. But besides that, it looked livable. Almost too livable.

"Auntie." Eve turned around. Clementine had that same hesitant look on her face. "Why are we in here? It looks like this is someone's house."

"It will be fine," she responded, turning back around. As she walked away, she murmured, "This was my house, anyway."

As we walked around the house, the panels softly creaked underneath our feet. But she didn't seem to care about it—Eve kept walking, head high without a worry or care of what might happen. It was as if she was a little too trusting of this house... even if it used to be hers.

Why don't you slow it down a little? We don't want to get jumped.

We will not 'get jumped', Kat, she assured, just the many things that she's assured tonight, I know this place like the back of my hand and I know what the Regality was searching for. They would not bother looking in here anymore. However, I know a particular person who might come looking around, and I need to plant evidence for him. She gripped her journal. It is the only way if we want to seek help.

Help? I brushed it aside. Still, there's no way that we don't know if there's a squatter or someone who's in here that shouldn't be. We need to be careful, Eve.

But again, she didn't listen to me. Again, she said, It will be fine, and left it at that. Not wanting to argue with her—mainly because I knew that it was all going to be in vain, anyway—I decided to keep quiet and watch. Looking in the corner of her eyes, I looked into the rooms that we passed by.

There were neatly folded beds like they were waiting for someone to come sleep in them. There were also carefully placed pillows and sets of clothes ready for the next day, whenever that was going to be. From what I could see, they were men's clothes but they all looked pretty old-fashioned like something that Miss Helena would've worn a few years ago. Not that they didn't look nice, but they didn't look like anything that I could imagine someone royal wearing today.

Eventually, Eve stopped at one of the doors. Then, slowly, she looked in. It was one of the few rooms in the house that didn't have steel blue and dark walls. Instead, this one was pale, maybe a white, and it seemed to glow despite the curtains that blocked the moonlight. Also, compared to the other rooms, this one was bare. The furniture did look fancy, but there was a surprising lack of it that I almost thought that it could be a storage room. But it wasn't. If it was, then she wouldn't be acting like this.