Flesh and Bone

PROLOGUE

I forced my legs to take the first few steps needed; forward and up, into the heated bus. Warmth hugged my body, thawing the coldness of winter from my chest. I grabbed the pole besides me a second later, the engine igniting in a quick drop of a foot and turn of the wheel. The driver wore a baseball cap, the thin fabric upturned at the edges. He regarded me from the corner of his dark beady eye. Winter chills still managed to rake my shoulders inward despite the blooming red in my cheeks I saw in his eye.

The man dipped his head at the yellow tinge of the ticket in my hand and sets his dark eyes on the road ahead, "Take a seat, kid." I oblige, shuffling down the narrow passage between the isles, gripping each pole for fear of slipping on the grease of the floor. I turn swiftly and sit still. The windows are fogged white and I glance to the only other occupant, excluding the driver, on the bus. The old man sleeps, his eyes shut tight and head lolling back and forth. I unzip my satchel and pull out my sketch book, flipping to the page of her. She looks exactly as I remember, except her eyes; I can never quite capture the depth of her secrets; or the shallowness of her smile.

I snap the drawing shut and wrap my arms around myself, willing a dream to come yet behind my eyelids a memory slips through the crack.

"Promise me."

Her eyes held the depths of the ocean. The longer you stared at them, the deeper you sunk, till everything started to fade into dark and your last breath became hers. I looked away. The light from the torch in my hand flickered, casting us in shadows and then pitch black. And shadows again. The trees gazed down at us from above.

"Promise me," I whispered. My breath sticking to my throat. I couldn't look at her anymore. I could always tell when she lied and that small, scared part of me didn't want to know if she would now.

A warm hand titled my chin up and I gazed into the deep waters of her eyes again. She didn't blink. "It's not goodbye if I'm coming back." She wrapped her arms around me and bent down to my ear, like she used to when telling me a secret. "I love you, sis."

I rub my temple and sit up. A heaviness perches at the corner of my eyelid and when I blink, it falls down my cheek. We were supposed to be sisters, but she lied to me. She lied. She left--nothing absolutely nothing in this world is constant, but life and death.

A loud achoo forces my eyes to snap to the old man, awake and blowing into a tissue. He sniffles. The bus continues to venture through the thickness of the dark and the fog has given way to a cloudy city. The grey buildings stretch into the sky and beyond, the roads narrowing and neon lights flashing on shop windows.

"Ardford City." I murmur, my lips widening into a smile.

The ride, however long, felt short. I had sat in my seat by the window for hours watching the sun sink behind the buildings. A few city dwellers had gotten on and off, and even the sniffling man had left a few stops ago. The bold text of my ticket glared up at me. One-way, it read.

The brakes groaned to a halt and the driver eased the bus to a full stop. The engine still rumbling its incessant noise. I stood up on shaky legs and gripped the arm rest for balance. The old man watched me walk past him through the corner of his dark beady eye. The doors slammed open and I mumbled a 'thank you' before taking my first shaky step forward.

Seven years later