Flower, Flower Beneath The Sky

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She was almost gone when he found her. She seeped away, cold and stone. She didn't feel anymore flesh and bone. It struck him how she reminded him of himself. A broken porcelain figurine and he wanted to try and mend her. Oh! How he wanted to mend her, how he wanted to seal every crack he'd caused her close.

She was gone as far as it concerned her. She didn't feel anyone come where she was, she never heard them call out her name, never heard them pick their way through. She never got the chance to see the worry in their face, she didn't feel him lift her from the grave, her grave. Backpack and all.

And she knew not how her name sounded on his lips nor how perfectly she fit in his capable arms. She didn't know she'd led him home. That he'd seen mother's grave. She was too broken to welcome him.

She'd never know he'd followed her. That he'd saved her from the eternal sleep of a death they'd caused her. She was freezing cold, an hour or maybe less later and she'd have never had to walk the hallway again, and she'd not have had to face them again but he was early this time.

She looked peaceful, too innocent and serene that for a sickening moment, he felt he owed her a break from it all. She deserved it, if nothing at all.

He felt she had the right to live in her dreams but he was selfish. It meant she wouldn't be in his reality.

It is twice too many times enough to cause you death. Twice too many...

But such peace was a welcome foreigner on her haunted features. He could see her clearly now. He brushed her matted dark locks from her face, lingering at the blonde which stubbornly fought to her roots, and drank in the sinful sight. He wondered how he never saw, but then again he knew he never looked.

He got her to his car, wrapped her in a spare coat and stretched her over the backseat. He found it funny and weird how he wasn't concerned about the polished leather seats. He turned on the heat and did a quick search through her bag. He got lucky, he found an address on a crumpled piece of paper stuck in a random corner and he sped to the nearest hospital. Someone needed to call her family.

The doctor had congratulated him. Said he'd done a great job by being fast enough. A little longer and she'd have been beyond help. But they needed her parents or guardian. Someone had to contact them. He remembered the address he found in her bag. He wasn't sure if it was hers or someone else's but its worth a try anyway.

Parents or guardians?

He didn't know which she had, nobody knew. She was a materialization as far as people were concerned; no past, no present, probably no future too.

But he had a conviction things were going to change, beginning from right there. Even if nature didn't take its course, he'd make sure it did. He handed over the address anyway and waited.

********************************

Cole watched a handsome middle aged man burst through the double doors. He seemed familiar. He was agitated but he maintained an aristocratic air of grace. He went straight to reception. He demanded for a scar... No, rather a Scarlette.

Scarlette Grace Collins... He was Scar's father? The Ian Collins was really the imaginary geeky Mr. Collins? Surprise, surprise, surprise...

The man whose art he'd spent almost half his lifetime staring at, admiring, the man who he'd Googled so many times. Now he that was close, he could see the semblance. Cole stood to his feet and called out unsurely, "Mr. Collins...?"