Saints (SAINTS #1) | ✓

38

INSOMNIA WAS NOT SOMETHING Jasmina ever had to deal with. Her mother always had told her how important her beauty sleep was and she had listened, always taking way more time than needed with anything concerning her looks. Here however, nothing seemed to matter except sleep. It was like a yawn was choking her, eyes trying to fly shut but being kept open by something she had no control of.

Gio was walking beside her, the usual tiredness in his eyes having faded into the same saturated blue as the sky, devoid of any emotion. The glimpses of softness he had shown on Earth were gone, no weakness visible in the hard exterior he had pulled up. They passed people freezing on the ice, all of them lying in foetus position and seeking a sleep they would never get.

"Please," one begged at Gio as he passed.

Gio didn't even look up, ignoring them as they stepped off the ice in a sea of clouds, wading through it like water. It was so warm she pinned her hair up, but at the same time not too much to become unpleasant. She found the reason easily, one look downwards at the clouds showing the steam rising everywhere except the circle around her and Gio.

"What's with the inconsistent temperature here?" she said.

"As soon as they remain still too long it fluctuates extremely," Gio said," the clouds start out as a soft warmth and the ice around it as a pleasant breeze, but when they stay still for longer than a minute it becomes boiling or freezing. Prevents them from ever getting any rest."

"Do you sleep here?" she said," it's hard to imagine you awake all the time."

"Me?" he said. She followed his gaze when he looked around, at the people walking and crying everywhere, all of them too scared to look at them. "I can't sleep as long as I'm here, to keep the magic in place. The devil made it so that the sins don't have to or feel the need though, so it's fine."

"Why do you sleep then?" she said.

With how many nightmares he got she didn't imagine it to be a comforting thing for him and yet it wasn't often she saw him awake. They stepped out of the cloudlands on the ice again, a blue throne rising up in the air. Bubbles were flying in the air around it, dreams trapped in the iridescence. Gio touched one absent-mindedly, but it didn't pop, instead calmly gliding off his hand.

"It's the only way I can see my mother," he murmured," so I don't mind if she carries her own wounds when she appears, as long as she still takes me in those arms of hers." He shook his head, slowly letting his gaze wander over the souls in his domain. "I used to think sleep was something to appreciate, but I know better now. It's a reminder of the sin I carry, of not having noticed my mother's grief until she slit her throat in front of my eyes."

"Why do you blame yourself for someone else's decisions?" she said.

"Because I could have known," he said," I knew, I did. I was just too lazy to do anything about it."

He held out a hand to her and she looked at him, before taking it when he nodded. The world around her started to spin again, fading into black, and it was only then she could hear the words of the lullaby, the words untangling in her head.

"This is Italian," she said.

"It is," Gio said as he closed his eyes," my mother used to sing me to sleep with this, back in Sicily. I remember waking up in Rome after she died, drowning in guilt, and hearing it still."

He let her go, his last sentence in fluent Italian, though it somehow sounded just as sad as the song.

"I'll see you at home, Jasmina."

"You should be glad I speak seven languages," she called out as she disappeared in the darkness.

"Seven? Why do you speak so many?"