Strings of Fate: The First Loop

CHAPTER 24

-------------------Betty--------------------

I’m dreaming again.

The field stretches before me in a blur of color and stillness, golden, almost too golden, like the moment just before the sun rises or just before it sets. I’m walking barefoot through it, the soil cool against my skin, the petals brushing against my legs like silk threads drawn through air. The flowers hum, not in sound, but in vibration. Like memory.

He’s there again. The boy.  He’s not far this time. Closer.

A few steps ahead, facing away, his hands at his sides. The wind tosses his hair gently, and the way the light hits the back of his neck makes my heart ache in a way I don’t have words for. It’s familiar. It’s terrifying.

I don't call out to him. I just walk towards him. Each step, the field seems to breathe with me. Not in rhythm with the world, but with something older. Something deeper. Like this dream existed long before I ever did, and I just happened to fall into it again. Sometimes I wonder if this field is heaven. Or maybe it's limbo.
The space between who I was and who I'm becoming. He turns his head, slightly, not enough to see his whole face, but just enough for me to know he’s smiling. He knows I’m here. He’s always known.

And still----
"Who is he?"
But my soul flinches every time I see him, like it’s remembering what I still haven’t caught up to. I pause when I reach a patch of white lilies. They weren’t there before. I kneel, touch one. It wilts under my fingers. The boy is in front of me now. No more than a breath away. He doesn’t speak. But he reaches out.

And I realize--- I’m not afraid anymore. Not of him. Not of the quiet. Not even of waking up. Because here, in this dream, everything is warm. The sun, the wind, the look in his eyes. Everything is soft enough to believe in again. His fingers graze mine---

And then I wake up.

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My room is still dark, but the kind of dark that begins to give way to blue. The sky outside my window is soft and swollen with light, not quite morning, not quite night. The air smells like dew and the faintest trace of salt, like the ocean air James always carries with him, like that night under the streetlight. I lie there for a moment, the weight of the dream still on me. Not heavy. Just present. My body is lighter. Not because everything is fixed---far from it. But because something inside me finally... shifted.

Maybe it was the way James held me last night, like I was both made of glass and fire. Maybe it was the way I let myself cry. Not hide. Not apologize. Maybe it was because I screamed when I usually stay silent. Maybe it was because someone finally told me I was brave--- and I believed him.

Last night was the first time in a long time I didn’t feel like I was fading.

I still hear the echoes of his dad’s voice. The way it dug into James like a wound.
But more than all of that--- I remember the way James looked at me. Like I was the answer to a question he’d been afraid to ask.

When he kissed me, I didn’t just feel sparks. I felt color. Everything vivid and sharp, like someone turned the contrast back up on the world. And the truth is---I’m scared.

Of what comes next.
Of how easily I can shatter again.
Of how loud the dark can still get.

But this morning, with the dream still clinging to my skin and the memory of his lips still warm on mine, I also feel something else. Hope.

Tiny. Trembling. But alive.

Maybe that’s enough--- for now. Maybe that’s what it means to keep going.