Alternate Realities

Visual Prompt: Ocean View, Fade

Submitted by Chaolslaboratin via Tumblr.

With the roar of the surf and the warm morning sun, little exists outside of her room, their room. Plurals feel odd with their newness, but despite the solitary moment, she's not alone. She's just been left alone for the morning while he sleeps beside her. Ever since they came together, Diana had not had many moments to herself. Looking at his tawny leg, she snaps her focus back to the singular contemplation she could only indulge without him.

She missed the silence. She missed the stillness. She missed waking and proceeding solely to address her own concerns. And, at the same time, she did not wish to return to her old routines. Shade was a disruption as luxurious as her current surroundings. He was clean panes of glass and soft, worn-in rugs. He was every bit as warm as the chestnut table and indulgent as the fruit-wine in the decanter. So much about him relieved her of the plainness that had been her everyday. And yet, with him, she knew only never-ending motion.

The room! The sumptuous surroundings of her morning itself was evidence of the breakneck pace of the last four weeks. Only four weeks? Two weeks ago, they raced through the alleyways, three was the stitches... yes, four weeks. One month and nary a still second and hardly a second glance at her old way of life. But the room! They did not belong in this strange country. Neither could have dreamed of the riches that surrounded them. But Shade knew how to impress and no risk was too big in how he tried to spoil her.

Two days and thirty jumps later, Shade had brought her to the towering resort on the ocean. A snagged key and a stolen sign guarded their privacy. Certainly, they had work to do, a mission to accomplish, but the room on the fifteenth floor had been his idea. A break from the underside of bridges, the dirty corners of red tarverns, and the wide open fields separated by rows and rows of corn, not that she'd once complained. How could she? Shade made every trip infinitely shorter and easier and more... more... More.

Diana slipped from the bed, dressed quickly and stepped onto the balcony. She didn't bother shutting the door, the lack of sound was more likely to wake him up. On the little chair, she perched and tucked her feet up onto the seat. Outside of the bars in front of her, all she could see was the deep blue-green of the ocean and the wide expanse of the sky. She clutched the pendent on it's chain.

"Madeline, I'm so in trouble here. I thought I had nothing to lose, everything to gain... but I can't lose him," she confessed. No sooner had the breath left her lips than did she consider he was one of those gains, a foretelling of victory if ever there was one.