To the Ends of the Earth

Chapter 14

Lilly

I stared up at the ceiling in my dorm room and tried to pretend that for just one moment everything was fine. Maybe if I told myself enough, it would be.

I rolled over and looked at the lumpy shape of my roommate buried underneath her covers. Shelby must have made friends with the guys from the baseball team after all because she hadn't been in our room when I'd made my mad dash back last night. That was probably for the best considering I'd been a gibbering mess. There would have certainly been questions that I couldn't and wouldn't have answered. Again. It was amazing how dramatic my life had become in such a short amount of time given how relatively mundane the first eighteen years had been.

I spent a few minutes mentally probing my golden link with Gabriel while I debated skipping my classes. If a magical hangover didn't constitute a day off, I wasn't sure what did. As it was, I was probably very close to a complete mental breakdown despite my promises to myself that I was "all in" now. In the wake of last night that seemed like such a reckless and childish attitude. It had possibly cost Gabriel and I greatly, maybe even our very souls, as Gabriel had accused. At the thought, I stifled a bout of useless tears. If I started now I didn't know when I would stop.

Somehow, I had managed to pinch off the connection with Gabriel in my extreme emotional distress when confronting him last night. I still wasn't sure how I had accomplished it or how I was supposed to reverse it. I could feel the metaphorical plug that I'd shoved between our link still sitting there and blocking things off. All I could remember thinking is that I couldn't stand to feel his anger, fear, and disappointment any longer. Maybe if I wanted to feel him again strongly enough, it would be the key to reestablishing the link. The problem was, I was a coward and I would rather just avoid the inevitable confrontation a little while longer. I didn't really want the plug pulled just yet, so I let it be.

Somewhere in the middle of my mental pity party, Shelby began to stir. It was around the time that I decided I wasn't going to worry about my blockage just yet that she threw off the covers and raised her arms in a dramatic yawn. Her outline began to blur as I watched and I was so wrapped up in my own self-loathing that I didn't understand the significance right away.

Wait. Was she looking a little more...blue than usual? Had she dyed her hair violet? Was she always so shimmery? What the...

"Frick!" I threw off my own covers and scrambled away from her so fast that I ended up falling off the end of my bed. That still wasn't far enough away from my apparently supernatural roommate so I continued to scoot butt first towards our door until it was pressed against my back. Shelby looked at me (with purple freaking eyes I might add) like I had lost my mind when she was the one who looked like a crazed smurf.

She fisted her hands in the covers and eyed me like I might attack her. "What the hell is the matter with you Lilly?"

Slowly, like when I had seen Morta's true form in the mortal realm, Shelby began to fade back into her usual visage. Her purple locks resumed their dirty blondness, her eye went back to a friendly honey-brown, and her skin looked more, well, skin colored. I covered my face with my hands and breathed in my own morning breath while fighting off a doozy of a panic attack.

"No, no, no." I muttered to myself over and over again, squeezing my eyes shut. I'm sure it was doing wonders for Shelby's opinion on my mental state.

I heard her get up off her bed and take a few steps towards me. I was still refusing to look although I was pretty sure she would just look like her usual self now.

I held out a hand, palm forward. "Don't come any closer! Please. Just... give me a minute."

Her footsteps stopped, retreated, and then I heard the bed groan as she presumably sat back down. "Ok..." she said slowly.