Borderline

chapter eleven.

HI GUYS! 

So, here I am, back to Borderline chapters! It just didn't feel right to leave a book unfinished like this, especially when it's published already, so I decided to write more here. I'm sorry you had to wait like this! I will try to update the best I can, alongside with my other book Query Quest. 

Therefore I have prepared two chapters here for you! I wanted to get three out, but I didn't know how long it would take to write them, and I didn't want you guys to wait even more, so for now it'll be two. Hope you'll like them ❤️

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My hands were quivering, and I didn't know why. This was only Keith, the same Keith I had been so eager to meet in the cave, and the same Keith that was so eager to meet me in the garden. There was nothing different about this way of communicating with him. 
Except that it was.

I pressed the button on the little device in my palm, every bubbly beep that emitted from the object like gunshots to my sanity. I could only hope that he would pick up, and not leave me hanging like this, with sweat on my forehead and my heart brushing over my throat. 

My room was filled with only those beeps for some ticks, until they abruptly stopped, and the communicating device started to form the image of my calling buddy, the holographic model of Keith's face whirring to life. The next tick, his face was there, in front of me, looking so darn real, in my own room. Or not, not entirely my own room; a little bit of the cavern wall behind him had appeared too, and it was like I was in two different places at the same time.
I stopped breathing, and didn't let out that air for some while. Keith blinked, and his eyebrows rose high, but I couldn't really figure out what he found so astonishing. The hologram flickered a little, but as soon as it came to focus again, I saw his hand slowly approaching my face, experimentally and hesitantly, like he wasn't entirely sure in what he was doing. Sooner or later, I would pass out from lack of oxygen, and it would be entirely Keith's fault.

It was like looking through water; blurry, slowed down. His hand coming toward my face, emerging from nowwhere, and suddenly I was questioning what was reality and what wasn't. However, when his hand came close enough, I knew it just went right through my face, and Keith frowned, withdrawing his hand, looking at it like it wasn't making any sense. I was ashamed to feel so disappointed, and even more bashful to want and rewind the moment, just to capture it a little bit longer. 

"Hm." The sound of Keith's huff sounded distorted, and I realized why. I quickly had to put my head above the imaginary water just to hear what he had to say. "It didn't work."

I was surprised I hadn't dropped the device already. "You mean... touching my face...?" The mice would have been jealous of the squeak my voice could muster.

Keith looked up again, the image of him wavering just a little, before it set to normal again and a smile had appeared on his lips. It must have been the cave that was disturbing the connection, and it was also the cave that was casting all these superfluous shadows over his face, which were bringing unnecessary feelings to my heart. What the hell had happened to me? Something must have happened to me overnight.

"Your face looked so real", he mumbled, his smile growing, both bigger and more timid. "I was just curious if it really was. Guess that this device isn't that advanced."

I felt my chest moving, but I couldn't hear my own breaths. Was this a case of breathing dead? Had I just come up with a case in my head that certainly didn't exist for someone else than myself? Yes. "Did... did you want... to touch my face...?"

Keith shrugged, and his flippancy didn't make any sense to me. "Nothing wrong with keeping things palpable."

I want you to be palpable, one side my brain chanted, but I quickly had to silence it down. But then I realized that Keith must have shared the same thought as me, and suddenly that sentence didn't seem as out of bound like it had originally been. So I simply just blurted it out.