❛ 𝔦 𝔡𝔬𝔫'𝔱 𝔴𝔞𝔫𝔱 𝔱𝔬 𝔰𝔴𝔦𝔪 𝔣𝔬𝔯𝔢𝔳𝔢𝔯, 𝔴𝔥𝔢𝔫 𝔦𝔱'𝔰 𝔠𝔬𝔩𝔡 𝔦'𝔡 𝔩𝔦𝔨𝔢 𝔱𝔬 𝔡𝔦𝔢. ❜
→ * . & ━━ a girl by the name
of sar, who can walk through dreams, finds
herself drawn to her hometown and into a
bigger m...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
THE TUNNELS WERE COLD AND FILLED WITH ASH. Sar hadn't been in an atmosphere like this since she'd gone into the tree after Nancy. It was so cold, so silent and so eerie. Sar can't imagine Will having been stuck in it for a week, and then having to live through flashes of it through another year.
Their flashlights reflected off the slimy walls of the tunnels. Sar and Steve walked ahead, following the trail on the map.
The kids were following glumly behind them like a group of munchkins, each equipped with a set of gasoline. Dustin was attempting to explain a story vividly to Max—something about slugs which Sar knew Max had no interest in, but the red-head girl still nodded her head in faux agreement. As Dustin was waving his arms around he hit Mike, who in turn hit him back and so and forth. Katie just watched the idiots with faint amusement, pottering along with a can of gasoline that was way too oversized for her body.
Sar held a tank of gasoline in one hand and Steve's spiked bat in the other—which she loved and he'd smittenly agreed to let her take. She was swinging it between her fingers lightly, a smile playing on her face. She winced along with it. The bruises on her face from bursting veins had begun to settle to yellow, but now she had a red blotch against her cheek from Billy's fist. It ached with each smile.
She and Steve walked side-by-side. Their shoulders brushed by occasionally, and once their fingers, but otherwise they went by in tentative silence.
Steve was watching Sar—the way her blue eyes reflected like the moon in the torchlight, the way her lips curved delicately and how her eyebrows curled with the slight forlorn expression on her face.
There was a splatter of blood in a line across her eyebrow, and a cut below to accompany it. Steve was staring at it in the barely lit light. "Billy did that to you?" he asked her.
"Yeah," she said, raising her fingers to touch it lightly. Steve saw her wince at the contact and protective anger flared up inside him again. "After he knocked you out." Her voice was very serious, something usually out of character for her. "Thought you were going to die," she told him, looking over to meet his gaze. She swung his bat loosely in her hands. "It scared me," Sar admitted as she looked away, voice unusually small. The bat dragged along some twisted vines trailing on the ground. He was staring at her with a peculiar expression on his face. The girl had her gaze focused on the ground. "A lot." Steve knew her well enough to notice the tremor in her cheek meant she was trying not to cry.
Steve didn't know what to say. His face ached and his jaw felt like he'd been hit by a sledgehammer. Practically his whole body was on fire, and he doubted if he got hit by a car the pain would be much different. But his copper eyes were only for her, watching as her skin shimmered silver from the pulsing light around them. Her eyes were an ocean full of sadness and he watched her forlorn expression.
"Did I ever tell you about One?" she asked, and squashed a squirming vine with her shoe. It squealed and died.
Steve back looked over at her, eyebrows furrowed. The girl hardly ever talked about her past and she avoided it whenever any of them pressed. "No," he said.
