Distant Lands

Kindergarten

You get to the top of the stairs - hand still on the rail, and this time the air around you is very, very cold. You can see your breath in the moonlight, it dissipating quickly once it has the chance of escaping your lungs. The opening in the crumbling, broken wall has some light pouring in from the moons outside. You can only see two of them from your current standing position. Dropping your hand from the rail, you walk over to the open ledge and take a deep breath of the rigid jungle air beyond the Spire. It's a lovely night out tonight.

You take in the view for a while, not exactly keeping track of time. Out on the horizon, you can barely see the edge of the line of trees - the fog is fairly thick and is obscuring much of the lush greenery. The stars are barely visible tonight. Taking a step back, you notice something out of the corner of your eye, and turn your head to see Spinel quietly standing there about six feet to your right.

You almost jump, and can feel your heart beating wildly inside your chest. How did she get here without you noticing? What the fuck?

"Up here, all alone?" She finally speaks up after a moment, ghost of a smirk on her lips.

"What, am I not allowed? Maybe I came up here to think." You reply without missing a beat. The wind flows freely up here, and the bite of the cold makes you involuntarily shiver. She regards you almost.. carefully, with her gaze. She quirks an eyebrow at you, before opening her mouth again to speak.

"Ya' up here to think? Well, maybe then you'll finally admit a couple things to yourself."

She takes one, two steps closer to you, beams of light from the moons above illuminating half her face in long, dramatic shadows.

"Admit what?" You hear yourself asking.

Her gaze flickers between the both of your eyes, and then she leans closer to you, close enough so you can see just how dark those marks on her cheeks are, and says:

"You-"

There's a sharp tug on your abdomen, and you are thrown into consciousness via a face full of very cold, very hard cement.

Opening your eyes and looking downwards, you come to the conclusion that you somehow had rolled over far enough to have gone straight off your tarp pile and onto the floor, pulling most of the cloth you've got over you with. You roll back over to see Spinel still asleep, an arm stretched out towards you as you were probably lying under it until recently. (She likes to pretend she's not a cuddler, but nearly every time you've woken up since you've been here she's either got some limb wrapped around you, or her face is pressed into your shoulder.) You feel a little bad that you had pulled the tarp off of her, leaving her out in the open air. You grab the edge of the cloth, pulling it up and over the gem, bringing it right up to her chest before dropping it.

Laying your head back down, you take a long breath while re-settling yourself. You watch her chest slowly rise and fall with her breathing, eyes fixated on her gem. The room around you is completely quiet, only the sounds of her breathing beside you are audible.

What the fuck was that dream about? You barely have dreams anymore, let alone ones that are so.. realistic with their message. Normally it's weird shit that doesn't make any sense, not something like this. Whatever. Your brain is just tired and stressed from this.. situation you are in. You're not going to put too much thought into figuring out what that meant. Closing your eyes, you drift back off to sleep to the sounds of the gem next to you softly breathing.

-

Even though it feels like you've only been asleep ten minutes, you wake up to Spinel shaking your shoulder and you roll over to face her. You feel like shit.