Love Lines

21: The Beginning Is the End Is the Beginning

The next couple of seconds were all flashes of metal and silence as I just went off instinct. I found if I thought about it too much, I wavered. My movements became slow and drawn out instead of the quick, no nonsense actions of when I wasn't thinking. If someone was looking in on us, I was sure they would think I knew what I was doing, that our little practice session was indeed a battle to the death but the only thing I've ever came close to welding like this was my golf club.

We ended as abruptly as we started.

He disarmed me, my sword falling off to the way side as his was poised right up against my neck, the blade chaffing my skin and floating in midair. He could've cut my head off but he checked himself at the last possible second and I should've probably ducked or moved out of the way but I remained still, fixed in place by the look in his eyes.

There was a swirl in his left eye, one of the life lines had leaked into the corner of his eye. I'd seen Cecil's do the same thing when he was glimpsing into the past. Only difference was, the life line wasn't swirling around his pupil but bringing a sort of yellow tint to his dark eyes.

And yellow was the same exact color of the wolf's eyes in my vision and it was confirmed for me, without a doubt, that it would be him in that cage, banging against the bars to be let out while Chris and Cecil wrestled on the ground a few feet away and not anyone else.

Almost as if thinking about my past vision triggered me seeing it again, I was taken back to that night, to my future self as I stood there in complete panic and fright. The ringing of metal against body filled my ears along with my cries for the boys to stop.

When the wolf finally broke free of his cage, I saw him stumble from his recent freedom, catching himself instantly, and then he started stalking over in my direction. There was something different about him this time. He was less wild, less beast and more man, and now that he was free, he was weary of the two boys and watching them with muscles tense, willing to pounce at any moment if needed. However his focus remained on me even though he was obviously watching them.

The sudden urge to run sprang up inside of me and I took a step back, my heel snapping a branch rather loudly. You never realize how loud that sound is until it happens to you at the worst time. The noise seemed to slow everything down as the wolf's head wiped in my direction, barring his teeth in warning. That expression clearly stated Don't move.

A startled cry rang out and I knew it was Cecil and not Chris. I took a step forward, my impulse to do something to make them stop renewed but that just ended badly. As I watched Cecil rear back with a flash of metal barely missing his face, I was slammed into by the wolf.

I don't know if it was the force of the blow or that the vision just ended but I was catapulted back into the present, the impact of which made me falter where I stood. Andrzej tossed his sword away just as my knees gave out. He caught me before I hit the snow and for what felt like the hundredth time in the past couple of days, I couldn't catch my breath.

This was getting really old very fast and the fact that I knew I would live the rest of my life with this "gift" was not a happy epiphany.

"Take deep breaths," Andrzej instructed as he carted me over to his rolled up pack and not so gently deposited me on the tree stump it'd been sitting on before he picked it up by the canvass handle. "Thankfully Tina gave me an inhaler when I told her what I had planned for today."

I really wanted to glare at him, thinking if he knew this was going to happen then why didn't he keep it from happening. But instead I just braced my hands on my knees and focused on trying to breathe.

"I really think giving an asthmatic the future time particular wasn't the brightest idea."

He fished an inhaler out of one of the pockets on the end and handed it to me. At this point I wasn't exactly thrilled with him so I snatched the plastic encased medicine. Snow was soaked in through my shoes and the bottom cuffs of my jeans. I wanted to be able to control this without using an inhaler. Being dependent on that thing was not something I wanted to go back to doing so I closed my eyes, wiggled my toes, and focused.