phosphenes (slow updates)

Prologue

Emma Hart was tipsy - not drunk.

She had had a few, enough to make her speech slur and her steps unsteady, enough to leech on to Finn Etheridge's left arm and also enough to notice his muscles beneath the fabric of his white shirt and compliment him on them; but too little to mistake this party for a good one. The music was banging too loud, the people were crowding the room - immersed in the too garish neon light of the mirror ball - and it smelled of sweat and deodorant and cheap girls' perfume, and Emma was feeling a headache starting to build up.

"Can we please get going now?" she pled, her voice sounding dumb as her tongue stumbled upon the words.

Finn sighed, blowing a brown strand from his forehead. "Please," Emma repeated, clasping onto his arm even tighter. He rolled his eyes.

"Okay," he gave in and Emma drunkenly hopped up and down in joy, chirping "yes yes yes".

"Come on," Finn murmured and dragged her along as he paved his way outside. For a moment, the white light reflected in his indigo blue eyes, and while Emma wobbled after him, she flashed a bright smile at him.

He knew she wasn't too drunk; in a few minutes, when they were in the car, with the silence, she would calm down. It was more fatigue that he found in her features along with the tipsiness of a few shots, that exact stage between awake and asleep where one went absolutely crazy. With a chuckle, he figured she'd presumably be sleeping the whole drive back home.

But right now, Emma was jumping to his car in the best mood, humming a melody he wasn't sure existed, and then with a giggle slipped onto the driver's seat. Finn slowly closed in on her, bent down and sighed again, with a little chuckle sashaying around his lips. "Emma," he said, amused. "No offence, but I think I should drive."

Emma pouted and crossed her arms in front of her chest. Her pupils were big, trying to adjust to the poor light, showing only little of her hazel iris' as she fluttered her eyelashes.

"Doesn't work with me, Em," Finn bragged, still grinning, and now a wide smile spread on Emma's face too. "Okay," she gave in after a short pause, then she quickly turned around and climbed to the passenger seat. Finn answered that with a smile before he opened the door and sat down.

"Let's go!" Emma chortled and observed him with a child's curiosity as he started the engine and pulled off the parking lot, navigating to the main street.

"Stop staring," he chided, his eyes still fixed on the road, but his features were too infatuating for her to just look away. His jawline, his high cheekbones, the curved line of his nose, his skin, porcelain in the moonlight that slipped through the windowpane.

"Emma," Finn repeated, and this time, she obeyed, resting her head against the neck-rest. As her eyes fluttered, he knew she was passing into the very tired state of mind, and as he watched her subconsciously flattening a rebellious auburn strand, he chuckled and turned on the radio.

Of course exactly now, Give Me Love by Ed Sheeran was playing, and instantly Emma's head popped up again, her eyes suddenly widely open. "I love this song!" she exclaimed and then started to sing along.

"And it's been a while but I still feel -,"

And then it all went too fast. Finn didn't even have the time to look at the right as the other car pulled up at full speed from the by-road and crashed into theirs.

"Maybe I should let you go," sang Ed Sheeran while around them everything shattered.

The world surrounding them broke to a thousand pieces, the cloudy sky opened out for this sole moment: cold silver light on every single shard, on every single fraction, reflections of one instant, as fast and fleeting as their lives.

As Emma was veered through the windshield and her seatbelt snapped, she began to scream, her voice blending with Finn's. With a dull crash her body hit the asphalt and pain rattled sharply through her bones. The asphalt was black, but there was moonlight on the broken pieces of glass, saturnine, pale, gloomy, and then bright stars.

They danced in front of her eyes, coming closer, drawing away, going out one by one, and then -

black.