Hiraeth Of The Heart (Tweek X Craig)

Chapter 16, Glowing Fields

  The low rumble of an aged motor filled the air.  Craig and I had been in the truck for around twenty agonizing minutes.  My eyes lightly wiped over what seemed like every boring field in Colorado as they passed by my window.  Blurred by the speed of Craig's reckless driving.

My body shook; this time being caused by the dents and imperfections in the road beneath the wheels of the truck rather than my usual anxiety.  I tried not to acknowledge that I was sitting in a stolen truck with a dead guy who became a demon in only 8 hours of death.  A small shiver flowed through me, swallowing my whole body with goosebumps.  As much as I didn't want an upfront view of Craig, I had one.  I knew a view like that would only mean trouble for me.  As much as I didn't want to admit it, I acted weird around him.  I'm not sure why or when it started, but I know it's there.  He sat beside me in the driver's seat with his fingers twisted loosely around the wheel, and his eyes clouded in thought.

I acknowledged the fact that I had been stealing glances the entire time, But this time I hadn't even noticed that my head had turned to look at him. Before I knew it, I was staring.  Then I noticed that Craig was doing the same; stealing glances in my direction. Every moment his eyes weren't on the road; they were on me.  It was- awkward to say the least.  I twiddled a strand of my blonde hair, slipping it in between my fingers like silk. I tried to avoid the tension by focusing on something else, but before I knew it, the dense silence was filled with Craig's monotone voice.

"So.. this is fun."

I scowled.
"Fun? You stole your dad's truck; forced me to get in; and completely ignored the fact that we were probably seen."

"You," Craig added.

"What?"

"You. You were probably seen."
He tipped his head forward before throwing a self-conceded smile in my direction.  "They can't see me."

I squinted my eyes in frustration, letting one of them twitch in the process.

"And that's better- how?"

"Oh, it's not. I was just reminding you. Also- My dad isn't the most amazing guy in the world; he deserves a truck or two stolen in his lifetime."

I began to open my mouth, but once my eyes met Craig's expression- his intense scowl towards the empty fields ahead of us, I decided not to question it.

I let my eyes wander back to the fields. It seemed like the tension in the truck that was seeping into every pore of my body and every crevice of my lungs was inevitable. I tried to push it out with a strong breath. It remained.

"The girl inside the house- did you know her?" I took a clean hit to the tension, hoping to start a conversation would help me breathe.

Craig's eyes loosened their harsh gaze against the fields, as they were no longer wielding malevolence.

"Describe her."
He asked with a thumb caressing his jawline. A nervous tick, maybe? I had too many of those to count.

"Strawberry-blonde pigtails. Gah- kind of short?"

"Shorter than you?"

"Yea- AH- wait- Don't call me short!"

Craig smiled lightly. It was dull. The truck slowed as gravel hit the wheels. He swerved the truck off the road with one hand on the wheel and led us into a field. As he came to a rolling stop and turned the keys to stop the truck, I gave him my most convincing nervous look.

"That's Tricia. My sister that I had told you about before."
Craig slipped the key out of the ignition after finishing his statement and left the truck with the slam of his creaky door.

I looked confused for a moment but soon came to a realization as a bundle of memories of him bringing up the "snot-nosed brat", slipped into my thoughts. I traced him with my eyes and watched him step into the bed of the truck, only to sit down with his shoulders against the back windows of the truck, causing it to bounce on the wheels a bit. I turned around inside the truck to open the back window.

"Why'd you drive us here, Craig? Aren't these parts of the outskirts suppose to be dangerous? Oh, Jesus- if you get me killed out here-"

Fingers against my cheeks stopped me in my tracks. Specifically a thumb and a pointer-finger. They squished my cheeks together and delicately drug my face out of the small window and right above Craig's shoulder. That's when I realized the warm fingers against my cheeks belonged to him.

"Just shut up and look." He demanded, cracking a half-smile into his stiff expression. I rose my eyes from his face to the field in front of us.

It glowed.
Illuminating green tinted light pulsated from the ground to the sky as thousands of specks of light steadily rose. It wasn't just a new source of light; it was a whole new world. A world in which waves of water were now replaced with thousands of glowing green specks that didn't let gravity pull them down. A world in which magic wasn't just a trick of the eye, but rather a reality. A world in which a boy with a tragic ending walked the glowing green earth-floor and showed magic to a blond boy who sought it out.

"Fireflies."
Craig mumbled.

"Fireflies.."
I mumbled back in awe. Craig's fingers slipped from my cheek and fell back down to his side.

The entire world went silent. The only noise left to roam the illuminated air was the hitching sounds of Craig and I's breath.

As the bug's split and the magic faded into the air, I had been checked back into reality by Craig's softly spoken voice.

"You should see it at midnight."
He heaved into the air, his breath visible to the eye. The sun was being engulfed by the roaming fields in the distance - shooting a amaranthine tint into the fading-blue sky.

The world still hasn't seemed to start up again.  Everything was a bit muffled; Everything but me and Craig. As I looked into his ocean eyes for a split second, I felt my heart yearn for one question to be answered. I shivered as anxiety pulsated through my entire body.  My head and shoulders resting on the opened window and leaned over him.  I brought my fingers up to sweep the hair from my face.

"Craig?"

My hands shook harshly as my breathing only seemed to unravel more and more as seconds passed.

I swallowed the saliva building up in my throat.
All I wanted, was an answer.

"Why- why did you kill yourself?"