United

Shot of Reality

“Are you scared?” Harry asked. His head was tilted sideways, his curly hair disheveled by a soft breeze. He was holding me, and while his grip was firm around my waist, it was as smooth and light as a silk sash. My own fingers were laced behind his shirtless neck.

Scared? Of course not. I was with Harry. Finally. In his arms. The truer question pulling at the back of my mind was: Should I be scared? I couldn’t be sure. I didn’t even know where I was.

I could smell rain in the air, close by. But both Harry and I were dry. I could feel a long white dress flowing down to my ankles. There was only a little light left in the day. I felt a stabbing regret at wasting the sunset, as if there were anything I could do to stop it. Somehow I knew these final rays of light were as precious as the last drops of honey in a jar.

"Will you stay with me?” I asked. My voice was the thinnest whisper, almost canceled out by a low groan of thunder. A gust of wind swirled around us, brushing my hair into my eyes. Harry folded his arms more tightly around me, until I could breathe in his breath, could smell his skin on mine.

"Forever,” he whispered back. The sweet sound of his voice filled me up.

There was a small scratch on the left side of his forehead, but I forgot it as Harry cupped my cheek and brought my face nearer. I tilted my head back and felt the my whole body go slack with expectation.

Finally, finally, his lips came down on mine with an urgency that took my breath away. He kissed me as if I belonged to him, as naturally as if I were some long-lost part of him that he could at last reclaim.

Then the rain started to fall. It soaked our hair, ran down our faces and into our mouths. The rain was warm and intoxicating, like the kisses themselves.

I reached around his back to draw him closer, and my hands slid over something velvety. I ran one hand over it, then another, searching for its limits, and then peered past Harry’s glowing face.

Something was unfurling behind him.

Wings. Lustrous and iridescent, beating slowly, effortlessly, shining in the rain. I’d seen them before, maybe, or something like them somewhere.

“Harry,” I said, gasping. The wings consumed my vision and my mind. They seemed to swirl into a million colors, making my head hurt. I tried to look elsewhere, anywhere else, but on all sides, all I could see besides Harry were the endless pinks and blues of the sunset sky. Until I looked down and took in one last thing.

The ground.

Thousands of feet below us.

When I opened my eyes, it was too bright, my skin was too dry, and there was a splitting pain at the back of my head. The sky was gone and so was Harry.

Another dream.

Only this one left me feeling almost sick with desire. 

Did I start the fire? Where's Stella? And Mrs. Leith? Did I kill them too? It's all my fault.

I felt a tear streaming down my face. I opened my eyes and I looked around and realized I was in a white room, lying on a hospital bed. I scanned all the room, on my left there was a white curtain that had been dragged halfway across the room, separating me from something bustling on the other side. I touched the tender spot at the base of my neck and whimpered.

I couldn't help but start crying. I was alone at a hospital and I didn't know if Stella and Mrs. Leith were alive. And Lucas. Lucas had been hit by a shadow. A shadow. This was all my fault, if I hadn't gone to the library with Stella looking for that stupid book that could help me with my stupid obssesion with Harry nothing of this would have happened.