Beating Heart (Delena Fantasy/Fanfiction)

Chapter 11: Fast Forever Farewell

Demi's POV:

12th January

I opened my eyes as my sight came back to me. I still lied in Selena's arms. I saw her face looking at me and smiling. I heard birds singing, I heard myself breathing again. I opened my mouth and tried to speak again.

"H-have we been here all night?" I asked. She nodded. I tried to lift my head, I could finally tell my body what to do again. A big headache darted to me. I had never felt this numb before. I slowly got up while Selena tried to help me. I finally stood on both legs again. She looked at me, checking if I was fully okay. She swiftly hugged my tight. I felt her apprehension in her breath and grip. She was so scared to lose me.

"I'm so sorry. I can't explain how guilty I feel. They warned me to stay away from you. They paralyzed you and took all your senses away. You could've been dead. Do you have any idea how scary it was to see you that pale and-." I placed my hand on the back of her head to stop her.

"Sshtt..." I began while I felt my eyes filling up with tears again. "None of this is your fault." Only now, I realized what actually happened. Her shadows were the ones who did this to me. Selena was right, I really could've been dead. But they didn't directly kill me. Why didn't they?

I sat down on the single chair of Selena's cold room. Selena fell on her mattress and covered her eyes with her arms. She didn't have any sleep last night, because she didn't want me to get cold on the wet ground. She cared about me so much. I lied in her arms all night while she tried to keep me warm and to reassure herself that I was alive.

"You can sleep if you want, I can amuse myself here." I offered. She inhaled deeply.

"No, I can't sleep now, you'll get bored." She mumbled. I looked around her room. She had one small closet for her clothes and a bookshelf. There were no wallpapers on her walls and the paint deducted. It was cold inside her house. Her heating was barely functioning. I rubbed over my arms while seeing the sun coming up through the damaged planks boarded up the window. It was very early. I looked back at Selena. She had totally departed. I chuckled. She couldn't say no to sleep. She wasn't a vampire. 

I got up to take a look at her books. They were very dusty. I took one and opened it: 'Beauty and The Beast'. I smiled while glancing through the pages. I saw doodles and notes written next to the beautiful drawings. I recognized Selena's handwriting. 'Favorite dress' 'you can see his paws transforming into human hands'. I opened another book: 'Baking & Cooking'. Informative stuff was written along the side this time. '3 inches, not 2!' 'Use lemon sugar!'. She really used the cookbook. She, of course, must have taught herself everything about cooking. Clever girl. I scanned the titles of the other books and stiffened when I read the last one, 'Legends and Myths'. I looked over at Selena for one last time before pulling it out of the shelf. A sticky note was hanging out of one page. I opened it to that page and I indeed saw what I expected. The page about the Penariks. The drawing on the side scared me. A creature was bending his chest towards a big light. It was bent too far for a normal human to reach without falling. Its ribs almost jut out of his skin. His face was very skinny and big black bags located under its eyes. You could see in his eyes that his mind was fully blank. His arms were wrapped around each other in a way that isn't possible. Many black shadows were twisting around him. He did what the shadows wanted him to do.

I read the lines on the left page. They were exactly the same as Selena told. And I noticed something memorable. The whole book was filled with notes and doodles, except for this page. Maybe she avoided it, or she maybe didn't want to make the page dirty with scrabbles. The book was old. Everything was written by hand. I looked at the bottommost lines.