Bloody Rose

Chapter 2: L+A

We had been walking for hours before I could recognise our surroundings, though I had never really travelled much before I met this Irish bastard.

"When are we going to stop?" I asked, nervous about the familiarity of a place I have never been.

"Soon." There was so much more that he just wasn't saying. I wished I could read his mind as well.

"I'm sure you recognise this place." he said, his voice going down an octave.

"I think I do..." I trailed off, seeing the familiar mango tree with multiple carvings of the same handwriting and the same letters, L+A, over and over again, the newest ones being about 30-40 years old. I could feel a spell of my own emanating from it but I decided that if it was my own, then I should not question it. I felt as though I would get the answers soon anyways. We sat down at the roots of it and let ourselves relax, keeping a noticeable distance between us.

"How old are you?" I asked, checking if he really was seeing the same dreams as me.

"I am 10,020 years old. What about you?" He was oddly calm about the whole thing.

"10,019." He's older by a year. But I thought we were all the same age.

"We?" Does he not know? Maybe I can try my new trick on him.

"What new trick?"

I stood up and he did the same. "This one." I placed my hands on either side of his face and closed my eyes. I could feel some sort of warming electric current flowing through my hands but I ignored it.

"Don't move a muscle."

I heard him scream in pain but I was not fazed as I had remembered doing this many times before. His screams got louder and I started to feel remorse and regret for putting him through this pain.

"I'm so sorry." I whispered over and over again. After I released him from my grip, I took a step back and just as he was about to collapse I caught him and set him gently on the floor. I sat down and placed his head on my lap and stroked his hair until he woke up. When he did, I tried to remove my hand from his head, but he grabbed it and motioned for me to keep going. The electrifying feeling was back but I kept telling myself that I should ignore it, I mean technically I had only just met this man.

"How many times do you think we came here as a couple?" It sounded weird talking about something so surreal that supposedly only occurred in our dreams. He moved off of my lap and sat up, putting the same noticeable distance between us again. I couldn't help but feel cold right after his warmth.

"I think about...8, 596 times. From before this tree was even planted." he responded.

"Did you guess that number?" I half-heartedly asked, laughing.

"No, I counted every time."

I looked over at him to see if he was joking, but his expression was completely serious. I continued to stare at him, wondering why he would count it and how he remembers the last time we came here.

"I counted it so that in the lifetime that we remember every second we spent together, I would know how many lifetimes I missed out on the memories of you. This is that lifetime."

"You don't know that." I felt like he was pushing his luck. I was afraid that if I believed we were free, even for a second, our freedom would be taken away again.

He held me in his gaze for what felt like hours, but I didn't feel the slightest bit uncomfortable. Instead, I returned his gaze trying to give him a reason to break it. But he didn't.

After a few moments, we stopped. He got up and stretched his hand toward me to help me up. I took it and we began walking again. I guess there's more he wants to show me. Before we left I had double checked that the spell on the tree was one of my own and I also checked what it was for. It turns out I had cast a spell onto the tree to make sure that no one else would carve anything into the tree, and so that no one could see the carvings in order to keep us a secret from someone or something. I didn't think about it too much as I didn't want to give myself (and Lucifer) too much to worry about.

"Are you coming?" He said with an odd look on his face.

"Yeah, I'll be right there." He turned around and began walking again. I took one last look at the tree just so I could remember where it was for another time, then I jogged lightly to catch up to Lucifer.

After a few steps, Lucifer turned slightly so I was in his peripheral vision. This stopped him from paying attention to where he was going and he ended up walking straight into a branch. In that exact moment I could feel myself crash into something, knocking me over as well. I quickly recovered and got up only to find Lucifer gaping at me as if I had just grown horns out of my head.

"What?" I asked him. I looked around trying to find what he was gaping at but found nothing.

"How did you fall over just now?"

"I don't know. I just bumped into a branch." I said with an annoyed tone in my voice.

"Look around, there was no branch in your way." He replied.

I looked around, there actually was no branch there. I looked back over at Lucifer. He had his fangs out as he inched his wrist towards his mouth. When he bit his wrist I felt a sharp pain in my own and rolled up my sleeve to see what it was. Surely enough, there was a bite mark. When I compared the marks, mine were identical to the one, quickly healing on Lucifer's wrist.

"I cannot believe it. Never in my life have I ever seen something like this happen before." He exclaimed, surprise evident in his voice. He was wrong. Something like this had happened before.

"It's in the dreams..."