Borderline

chapter thirteen.

I finally finished a project I've been dealing with for like, one year now, so I can finally sleep in peace knowing it's done! Therefore, the chapter MAY come more frequently??? Pff, ok, who am I kidding, it will take as long to update, especially when I have upcoming national tests.

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This felt just like before, running through the thicket to see him, only now my heart was somewhere in my head, and I hadn't breathed out since I'd started sprinting, and it felt like I could explode with all the oxygen gathered in my chest, wanting to come out.

My feet were working unwittingly, jumping over rocks and fallen tree branches like they could do it while I was sleeping. I didn't know how many times I'd ran through this path, but I knew it was many enough for me to be so skilled in it. Only now, there would be another destination.

To think that I was only nervous over my own actions was an underestimation. I was absolutely, utterly, freaking out over it; this was another stage of lunacy, and I knew that, but still my feet were moving on their own, my hands darting out to push aside every looming branch that tried to block my way. Maybe this was the forest's way of telling me to stop, and to turn around, but this were my body's way of contradicting, and to bustle my way through.

The cave looked awfully inviting as I pushed away the last branch to reveal the sight of it on the other side, and it was like it was beseeching me to come inside, to meet him there. But the stillness I felt, even from outside, was my sign that he wasn't there, and that this certainly wasn't my destination, for this time. I slowly walked forward again, just to pass it, continuing through the endless abyss of green and brown. The branches seeming got fewer the further away from the cave I walked, and it put my heart at ease. 

I didn't know how long I wended for, and for how many trees I passed just to make me wonder if I had already passed that tree, and then throw a quick glance over my shoulder just to see I wasn't completely lost. Maybe I was walking the complete wrong way, and Keith was somewhere completely else, several kilometers away from me.
But then, like some kind of aplomb, another sound broke through the silence the forest was radiating, and it didn't really sound cautionary, more like an easement, and my legs caught another wave of zeal, and I lurched forward, a grunt caught in my throat as I tried to steady my staggering feet. The sky bared itself more and more I ran, and the closer I got to the source, I could hear the sound taking a bigger form, hitting the shells of my ears and traveling up to my brain. 

It was water. No, more specifically, a waterfall. It was soft in a chaotic way, and it was right before me, as I tumbled through the last few leaves that was like a barrier between me and my destination. 
My chin fell down, and it almost hurt from how wide my eyes were, and I just stared,

stared at the big pond in front of me, the little mountain above with the teeming waterfall, falling down like water from a tap into an overflowing sink, the sun - looking like a yolk against the warm sky - resting on the horizont and lighting up the glimmer of the water rays in a way that made it seem unreal. The mountain was covered in moss and lichen, the rock of it almost hidden completely behind.

It was like a big basin in the middle of the forest, the air around me turning more humid and chilly, and I could feel how incredibly small water droplets collided with my skin and danced around me, tucking themselves in my hair and tousling it, fluffing it up. I put my arm up, looking down at how the few short strands of white hair stood up as a layer of goosebumps formed on my body. 
I looked up again, my arm still in the air, and further ahead, I noticed something else in the constant moving water, something that wasn't in fact water, but exactly what I searched for.

There, behind the fog of the water droplets, partly under the spurt of the waterfall, stood Keith, eyes closed as he intently washed his hair, his nimble fingers running through the obsidian strands on his head, and even from here, I could see how his skin pulled and strained over his muscles underneath, and how his chest was displayed like a purple landscape, the bumps and swells of every mountain and cliff. How much did this guy train~