Through The Spyball

Peace

She needed to see him.

She just had to.

She vowed that the next person she laid eyes on had better be Keefe Sencen or else she would start flinging her poo like Iggy.

Sophie knew that it was strictly against Mr. Forkle-Sir Astin-Magnate Leto's rule of "no trying to spy or contact Neverseen in any way," and that was one of the reasons that she was doing it.

Sitting on the edge of her bed in her way-too-big-for-her bedroom at Havenfield, Sophie took a deep breath, holding her Spyball steadily in her hands. Then she said four words.

"Show me Keefe Sencen."

At first, Sophie thought that it wasn't going to work, that the Neverseen had found a way to make sure no one saw them, because the Spyball remained unresponsive. But them the orb started changing color, its contents shifting around, until suddenly they cleared, showing a cliff somewhere out in the world, rain pouring in sheets and the sky as dark as night.

He looked terrible. That was the first thing she noticed. Keefe's clothes were in tatters and soaking, the only thing not ripped to shreds was the mark of the Neverseen: a black patch with a white eye on his right arm.

Seeing it on him made Sophie's breath catch in her throat, but she forced herself not to fuss over it, because she knew that she was going to get him back.

Keefe's hair was...well, Sophie had really misjudged how much Keefe could actually take. It looked like his blond hair hadn't seen the looks of a comb in ages and it was plastered to his forehead due to the rain.

But the worst part of him was his face. It was scarred and, Sophie guessed, had once been bloody, but the rain had washed it away. Keefe had a bruise in his left cheek and a black eye. The reason why suddenly struck Sophie like a cold wave:

They were beating him, Sophie thought. She could only think of one reason as to why any they would do that, other than Neverseen just being plain evil, and that was because Keefe had let her go.

Keefe was sitting crisscross-applesauce at the edge of the cliff, his eyes closed and his face blank as rain pelted him and the wind whipped at his hair. All in all, Keefe didn't look distressed, he actually looked pretty peaceful and...comfortable. Other than his twitching fingers (twitching, always twitching) and beat up face, he looked fine, not at all like what she thought he would look like, not...

"...Broken," Sophie whispered, surprised at the sound of her voice faltering and the tears falling down her cheeks.

She swallowed the lump in her throat and watched as a cloaked Neverseen member staggered towards Keefe, holding something that looked like a beer bottle from the Forbidden Cities in his right hand. He goes and sits next to Keefe, and only when it appears that he starts talking does Keefe open his eyes.

Cold, so cold, like ice, Sophie thought, her heart clenching as Keefe's icy blue eyes looked at the cloaked Neverseen member, an evil smirk appearing on his lips. Through his eyes, you would never be able to find a trace of the old Keefe, the one that joked and snuck into Dame Alina's office, or rode with her across the ocean on an alicorn, or the Keefe that was her friend. Now there was only coldness and emptiness. No emotion.

Sophie felt hopeless. She wanted to take the last bit of hope she had left, throw it to the ground and destroy it underneath her boot.

But she knew that she couldn't. She had to hope. She had to hope she would get Keefe back, and that Neverseen would be destroyed, and that the plague would be stopped with the Panakes flowers, and that everything would be alright.

Trust me. Always.

Please don't hate me. Never.

But Sophie found herself wishing something too.

"Please come back," she barely managed to whisper as the image of Keefe disappeared and her tears clouded her vision from her cruel world.