Ebony Wings

25

~Ali~

It is dusk when we arrive. Inky clouds bloom across the indigo sky, blotching out the light casting a murky film across the empty plains. No stars will shine tonight.

The Ruined Church, underwhelming in it's stance of a single, three story turret, stands alone at the top of the small hill we stand before. It's bricks, hard to distinguish in the dank light, look dashed with small cities of moulds and fungi and determined weeds. Chipped, arching windows allow narrow shafts of light inside, criss-crossed with rusted iron bars over the openings. A cross adorns the tip of the church's pointed tower, like a black star on a wilting Christmas tree.

Like an oil spill, the darkness continues to bleed across the sky, washing away the Church's silhouette. My feet throb in my boots, worn away at the sides and aching on my soles. I plead with Ethan for an immediate night of sleep.

"Well, we only have sleeping bags so lets hope the clouds don't deliver." Ethan pulls out a glossy, black and green sleeping bag from his rucksack and Jack uncovers an identical one for Jaz.

"Ali! Come sleep next to me!" Jaz fans open her sleeping bag, gently guiding it to the floor across a thick bed of grass. I roll mine out beside hers so our bags line up head to head. My knees punch into the soft earth and Jaz carelessly falls onto her stomach with a throaty sigh, causing us both to laugh. I slip my feet into the plastic cocoon and wriggle my way inside, pulling the zipper up the entire length of my body.

We huddle close in our pouches, shoulders practically touching and cast our eyes to the speckled ocean rippling above our bodies.

"Kinda scary, huh?" I whisper into the darkness, overwhelmed with a sense of insignificance.

Jaz shifts thoughtfully beside me. "Yeah," she answers quietly. "It makes me... squirmy," she laughs.

"Yeah," I agree. "It's just so... big. It's too easy to forget how puny we really are!" We both giggle and when the moment subsides, it is followed by a thick silence as my doubts resurface. I continue with a deeper tone to my voice, seriousness and apprehension mingling. "How can we make a big enough difference to anything, Jaz? Anything at all?" 

Jaz is pensive a moment, just long enough to give my question meaning. "It's not the size of the difference we make, but the impression that it leaves. The smallest acts can have the biggest impacts after all. So don't you ever think that what we are doing here will mean nothing, because someday, it will mean everything." 

After a moment, Jaz seems content with her brief speech and whispers goodnight before rolling over onto her side and becoming still. I try to follow her but my mind will not still, images and thoughts flashing brightly behind my eyes. 

After a while, I concede and open my eyes to the stars, that strange magnetism returning to me the longer I stare. A biological and chemical reaction flickers within me, drawing me in, an obscure sense of homesickness resting in my chest. All the starlight begins to blur in the sky. 

I hear Jack settle to the floor, some space away from Jaz and I, shuffling on the hardened ground until he becomes silent. Minutes later, Ethan appears by my side from the darkness, lowering himself onto the grass beside me. I hold my breath. Unsure if he thinks that I am awake or asleep, he pulls me into his warmth, resting an innocent arm over my side until his breathing settles into what seems to be sleep. 

With his chest gently rising and falling beside me, his fingers softly moving in sleep, biological and chemical reactions begin igniting all across my body for an entirely different reason. 

For a moment I tense in his grasp, aware of the inappropriateness of the situation and my capricious reaction. I think of all the stolen conversations I have had with Jaz about a 'normal' Guardian-human relation and understand that my whimsical emotions, our clandestine touches and gazes, are anything but normal. The realisation sets my head spinning, both worried about the consequences of continuing the budding path we are on, and worried of the destitution that will incur if we don't. 

And then I think about the certainty of my inevitable death, meant in the sense of its likely imminency in the next couple of days, or ultimately the sureness of my mortality. One day I will die and when that day comes, much sooner or later, my last wish is to leave this life with no regrets. And living life with Ethan fastened at an arm's length would be worse than any death that will claim me.

And so, with dark cloud of caution floating some distant way above my head, I allow myself to relax, spilling into his chest, inhaling his galvanising scent. We are not normal and I understand the probable punishment of our coupling, but for the first time, I don't care. Just a day with Ethan, a touch, a kiss, a look, is worth any penalty for the way he makes me feel.   

So I lock that fortitude away, safely hidden in the recesses of my mind and I fall into a deep, comfortable sleep.

The last thing I recall of the night is a melodic whisper in my sterile dreams, chanting in time to Ethan's beating heart thumping at my back. Repeating and repeating and repeating.

"Redde perditum angelus."