By the time Kelsey had come back, Feya was huddled in the corner, silently struggling against the tears again. Kelsey pretended not to notice, and Feya appreciated this. Right now, she didn't want a hug or pity; she wanted everything to be the same as it was for the last few seconds he was alive. After all the struggling and denying, they only managed to spend a few measly seconds being happy.
Once the pentagon was sketched on the floor, Kelsey placed a candle at each point of the five corners, and lit them one by one. "You know, you were always better at ancient witchcraft than me," Kelsey hedged in, but Feya shook her head.
"I can't do the Latin, it always works better in Latin," she croaked. The spell was a silent one, but Kelsey continued without questions. She placed herself in the centre and cupped her hands around the bowl, silently requesting for the waters to show her the way. For the glassy surface to reflect in her mind, which trinket held a treasure in its dusty grasp. Nothing. She closed her eyes, repeating the thoughts in Latin, hoping that this would strengthen the spell...
Kelsey stood before she had even realised what she was doing. The water spilled onto the floor, over the blood stained wood. It lifted the crimson colour from the floorboards before dissolving into nothing. "It's not here," Kelsey annunciate.
***
For the next three days Feya convinced herself that the emotional pain had made her mind hallucinate Tristan's voice from the grief, but on the fourth, she just could not bring herself to believe it any more. For three days she held a brave face to each lesson, where she simply sat listening beside Kelsey, Odin or Finn. She went to her independent lessons and still followed everyone into the canteen although instead of eating she simply nudged the food around her plate.
On the fourth day her shield exploded in the common room. She caught sight Isadora planting a kiss on Finn's cheek and her emotions did a back flip, sending everyone in a three metre radius flying forward. One of her victims scuttled off but other than that, no one spoke or seemed angry at her. Instead the faces dotted around the room turned to stare, anticipating another outburst. Everyone else was over it already, because they had to be, but she could not understand if they were judging or pitying her. Either way, she ran from the room once more, unable to stay in the centre of the stares for any longer.
This time her feet brought her to the fountain that marked the centre of the bunker. No one was ever here, and that made it the perfect place to just sit and breath. She slowed before the majestic waters gushing from the palms of the angel. For the first time she actually took in the sight of the sculpture.
It was an angel with no halo, but wings that spread out wide while its head was bowed in sorrow. A tiny bead sat near one of its closed eyes and its palmed hands were held over its chest - the sculpture was bleeding the water from its heart. For one second, Feya reached out to its glassy surface and stroked the cold frozen arm of the sculpture, just to check if it was made from ice the way she was told it was. Sure enough, the cold tingled on the surface of her finger, the first feeling she had felt since all emotions froze.
"Do you like it?" a stern but young voiced ask her from the opposite side of the fountain. At first, all Feya could see was the long braid before Isadora came into view.
"Yes," Feya murmured, still with half her mind in a cold trance. "It's beautiful...meaningful..." Her voice was stuttering as she tried not to cry. She hardly knew why, other than the tears had been ready to thaw for the last few days. Feya turned and sat on the fountain edge, where Isadora eventually copied her.
"When I used to help bring the Ember's into the bunker it was hard," Isadora began wondering out loud. Feya knew she should feel uncomfortable listening to Isadora speaking from a place deeper than her hard head, but she could not bring herself to fall into her social shell. "I used to warn people not to get close to anyone, because it's exactly what I did, and it hurts when you lose them."
Ashes to Embers - Chapter 8
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