A Deadly Bite

42 || First Step

Fiesi is floating amid nothingness.

The space around him -- not air, not water, not anything -- has a crushing weight, like he's been plunged into the very depths of the ocean, stuck with an entire world laid on his shoulders. His stomach caves inward, pummelled by an imaginary fist. His head throbs. His limbs feel thin and brittle. He kicks his legs, feet moving sluggishly and without result despite how mountainous the movement is to force. Energy is a dry trickle, dripping out at his fingertips. He's drowning in his own exhaustion.

A distant hunger for light awakes, yet his flame is absent, a hollow pit squirming in its wake. The flame never comes in his dreams. Because this must be a dream, he's sure of it, though it has an eerie reality to it that digs pincers into his flesh.

A bitter tang wraps his tongue. He shivers. This may be nothing, but it's cold.

The ice has a familiar prick. His head jerks up, eyes scanning. His feet pedal. A smile builds up in his chest and bursts out warm on his face.

She's here. Like it melts from darkness, Jaci's raven hair spills into existence, splayed out in a serene, drifting haze around her face. The frosty white-blue of her dress contrasts starkly with her dark skin. Her puffed sleeves ripple, clothes hung loose and swaying, all so gently calming. Her eyes are closed, her lips set in a pensive frown.

Fiesi forgets the need to breathe; the weight on his chest drifts, faraway enough to ignore. He claws his way through the space, grappling for the effort to swim, until she's right in front of him. He reaches out. His fingers pass a hair's breadth from her palm, yet her hand glides smoothly out of the way, dodging the touch like a paper-thin veil hovers between them.

Her eyes fly open. They're like ice, piercing, and they feel accusatory. The pit in Fiesi's chest yawns ever deeper. His smile fades.

"Jaci," he whispers, startled when he truly hears his own voice, clear as day and cracking apart. "Jaci, I'm so sorry."

Still she stares. A lump builds in his throat, a void swelling between his ribs, insides swallowed by a thorny blackness that loops again and again around his heart. The pain of it is tangible. It shudders through him. He digs his nails into his forearm, though the sensation is numbed, hardly there at all.

His gaze slips downward to her skirts, shame's teeth locked in his flesh, before something desperate yanks his focus back to her face. He doesn't deserve to look at her but can't bring himself to look anywhere else. The thorns tangle and tear.

A stupid laugh shakes his chest, bitten off just in time to prevent it from tumbling into a sob. "I miss you, Jaci. Stars, I... I'm an idiot." He swipes at his eyes, finds them achingly devoid of tears, and lets his fingers trail upward to rake through his hair instead. "I should've been there for you."

There's so many meanings to that. I shouldn't have left you behind. I should have protected you. Mostly he just wishes he'd wrapped her in a tight embrace on far, far more occasions. He wishes he'd told her how pretty she looked, perhaps, brought that sly smile to her face more, at least admitted how deeply he valued the times she stuck around when no-one else would. Anything that made him worth caring about. Anything more than the pathetic palil he is.

Maybe it's a lesson he'll never learn. Maybe that's why the world keeps teaching it, inflicting that same cruel irony. "You are selfish," it says, a popping, syrupy hiss in his ear. "You take them for granted. Now see how much they mean to you only when they're gone."

He'd punch something if he could, but there's nothing here. He grips his arm tighter instead, trembling with the bridled trickle of adrenaline, gaze snagging constantly on Jaci's passive expression. "I, uh..." He swallows thickly. "I have so much to tell you, Jaci. All your questions. I can answer them now. I'll tell you everything, I promise."