Burned

1.06: The Breakdown

WITH THE FLAMES IN HER EYES, SHE BURNED.

Outside it was surprisingly warm for in the middle of the night. We, Morgan and I, were outside on some sort of terrace. We had coats on, obviously, and woollen socks. The fresh air made my red cheeks cool down a bit. It felt like I could breathe better than before. Probably because I was very used to being outside, as that was something us Witches did a lot. We were outside to take care of plants, to practice our magic, to meet each other, or, as Morgan and I did now, to watch the stars.

'So, this is a subject at your school?' Morgan asked me, not really bothering to look up to the school.

I nodded. 'It is. It's very popular, you know. We also learn about what people thought of stars back in the old days. It's a mix between physics, psychology, math, astronomy, astrology and geography, I think. That's why it's fun, everyone can master it.'

'But you don't really have a lot of jobs inside the astronomy,' Morgan told me confused. 'Good paying ones, I mean.'

'So? It's not less important or less fun because of that,' I shrugged, telling her my perspective.

'Hmm,' Morgan responded, still not really looking at the sky.

I chuckled. 'C'mon, look at it. It's beautiful.'

Morgan turned back to face the dark sky. I knew she looked at it the way her father had always done before her. I knew she wold see the stars as balls of gas, floating through space. I knew she would think about that their are big spaces of nothing between them, but she wouldn't see the beauty in it. She would let her gaze slide over the constellations and even a planet without truly seeing them. I knew she would look at it the way she was thought to.

'Look there,' I pointed in the sky, making Morgan look over to a group of stars. 'That's the constellation Lyra. It comes from a Greek myth about a certain kind of harp called a lyre. The brightest star in Lyra is Vega. Vega's the first star after the sun to ever be photographed.'

'You learn this at school?' Morgan asked me surprised.

I nodded while I let my arm fall again. 'The myth isn't as dark as a lot of others. There's this dude called Orpheus and apparently he would play so beautifully even trees and rocks would be charmed. Then his wife, Euridyce, died, so he went to the Underworld to get her. The deal he made with Hades was that he could go get her, but he couldn't turn around at any point. When they were almost out, Orpheus looked behind them and Euridyce was doomed to never leave the Underworld.'

'Not as dark?' Morgan chuckled, making fun of me. 'That's promising for the other myths.'

'Well, in some Greek tragedies, worse things happen. Like this girl Medea chopped her brother in pieces, killed the new wife of her husband and murdered both her children,' I shrugged as if it was no big deal.

Morgan let out a laugh. 'All right, then. How does that Lyra myth end, though?'

I smiled, knowing I reached my goal. 'Well, there are two ends, actually. I prefer the one where Orpheus rejects all marriage proposals because he's still upset about the thing with Euridyce. So, these women all get mad. They attack Orpheus and he dies.'

'That's one way to do it,' Morgan laughed while she shook her head.

We looked back at the sky again. Now I knew that she looked at the little points of light, all having just slightly a different color. She noticed how those little bits of nothing between the stars were actually multiple light years. I knew she saw how that inside the big parts of nothing there could be black holes hidden. Maybe she even looked at aliens at this very moment. She knew that, as she was watching, the universe had already expended more times than she could express in numbers,

I gasped. 'Oh, look there! You see that silver luster?'

'Where? Oh, yeah, I see it!' Morgan told me with a smile, happy she saw what I saw.

'That's Jupiter,' I explained. 'You know how a day there is only ten hours? You could literally sleep for a whole day there. And it has 67 moons!'

'That is so cool,' Morgan told me with a smile, now turning her head to me instead of the sky. She yawned.

It made me remember why we were out here again. Morgan had told me how she was still awake, but not tired. She told me she just couldn't sleep. I had that many nights, but I knew that that wasn't what Morgan was struggling with right now. I didn't know how I knew that, but I had my mother's genes on this, so I just knew sometimes why and how people felt the way they felt. I didn't even know why I cared this much, I probably just wanted to help Morgan.

'So, why can't you sleep?' I asked with a soft and kind look on my face.

Immediately Morgan's mood shifted. 'Because.'

'Because?' I continued, knowing I crossed a line.

Morgan snapped.

'Because pf life is why,' Morgan told me with an angry look in her watery eyes. 'Because life killed my dad right in front of my eyes. Because my dad saved the world a million times from threats he had nothing to do with. Because the world owed him and of all seven billion on the planet it was him who had to sacrifice his own life.'

What surprised me was that only one tear had fallen down Morgan's cheek, making me remember it wasn't that easy for me. 'I lost both my parents because I was born and I'm still broken.'

When I looked into Morgan's soft brown eyes, I saw how broken she truly was. There were moments like just now where she would be the happiest girl in the world. There were moments like back in New York where she would be the bravest in the room. She was very good at hiding it. Or maybe she was just good at distracting herself. Either way, it took its toll and didn't just break a heart, it broke a soul.

'Does it ever stop hurting?' Morgan asked me, hope in her eyes.

'No,' I told the girl truthfully. 'It'll never stop hurting. It'll get better, though, but it will always hurt you inside. There hasn't passed a day where I've stopped thinking about them. You just need to master the art of finding comfort in it rather than devastation.'

'Life asks so much of me,' Morgan told me with shaky breaths. 'They always ask me if I'll follow his footsteps, not caring how much pressure they put on me. I'm just not- I'm not him. I can't- I'm just not-'

Seeing her broken broke me.

'Ssh, Morgan,' I told the sweet girl while I put an arm around her and looked back at the stars. 'Life doesn't asks anything of you. All life wants for you is to breathe. Nothing else, just breathe.'

So she did.