The sky around Suri was grey and black. The air was freezing, and it whipped her against the wood paneled wall she was pressed to as if she could slip into it and escape.
Her clothes clung to her, drenched in the water falling from the sky and the tears pouring from her cheeks. Streaks of lightning flashed in her vision and caused her to fold in on herself further, curling into a tight ball as she slid down to the dirt floor.
Despite all this, she couldn’t hear a thing.
Her airways constricted around her vocal cords, the veins in her throat bulged, but no sound escaped above the waves of rain and ice lashing at her. When her chest threatened to collapse from exertion, she stopped her futile screams. She leaned against the wall and lowered her arms to her sides as the storm continued to wash over her, stinging her skin, and making her feel heavy under its weight.
Help me.
She had thought the words in her mind, but in the infinite silence, they echoed around her, warming her skin against the squall like an embrace. The rain and ice stopped spraying on her face, and the wind slowed to a cold breeze. She peered through the dripping, frosted strands of her hair, blinking away the ice that had formed on her lashes.
A curtain of crimson enveloped her, replacing the darkness just beyond it. It wasn’t paint or fabric draped before her, but long strands of hair that originated from the head craned above her. She tilted her head back towards the frail looking form shielding her from the pounding rains and ice: a boney man wearing nothing but a thin pair of white pants.
He was covered in frost. Small snowflakes could be made out in the thin sheets of ice encasing parts of his body like an expanding rash. His lilac eyes dimmed in what appeared to be pain.
The man lowered his head and as he did small bits of ice fell from his twisting muscles. “Thank you,” he said. “I wish, only, that there could have been another way.”
A sharp scorching swiftly hit her left palm as his voice echoed around her. Suri looked down. A soft, violet glow burned intricate lines across her left hand and spread down her forearm like wildfire.
The man’s body curled around her, blocking out the storm surrounding them as his face pressed into her hair. If she hadn’t been sopping wet, then she would have felt the tears that he shed.
But even that wouldn’t have mattered to her—not when her arm felt like it was being ripped apart.
***
Suri could hear own screams as she awoke from the dream. The blanket tangled around her was hastily thrown to the floor and for a moment she had forgotten where she was. She was much more concerned with the dimming glow fading from her left palm then with Trenton throwing the door to the guest room open.
“What in the bloody hell was that?”
She blanched in embarrassment. The sun had barely peeked through the curtains on her third day of staying at his home, and she felt as though each day she had done something to totally annoy him.
First, she had fallen ill with this ridiculous fever. He was reluctantly willing to let her stay until it broke, especially since she refused to tell him where she lived. When he asked her to at least call her parents and tell them where she was, Suri was secretly elated that the fake number she dialed was disconnected. He wasn’t nearly as thrilled.
Yesterday, she had left her plate on the table after dinner. She swore to him she was just going to the restroom first before cleaning it up, but he didn’t fall for that at all. It was honestly impressive that he didn’t have children of his own running around. She was convinced he had those eyes in the back of his head that mothers always talk about, and he was practically a human lie detector.
Today she had set a record though. He was already giving her an incredulous look and it wasn’t even past noon.
“I think it was a nightmare,” she said, shifting uncomfortably under his steady gaze.
“You think or you know?”
His eyes left her to look around the room cautiously, darting around the corners of the room as if he were searching for something. She frowned. “I didn’t break anything, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
He looked back at her, visibly seeming as though he was talking himself down. Suri didn’t ask what it was that he seemed so spooked about; she was too busy trying to inconspicuously look at her hand, only to be disappointed when she found nothing there.
“Well, it’s lucky that you’re awake,” Trenton said, interrupting her thoughts. “It gives you plenty of time to get yourself ready for school today.”
She whipped around to look at him in wide eyed panic. “You were serious about that?”
“Yes, quite. Aren’t you just delighted to be rid of me for a full eight hours?”
“But I, well um, I don’t have my bag,” she reminded him, reaching down to grab the blanket thrown on the floor. “O-Or my notebooks.”
One of his dimples revealed itself when a sardonic smirk broke across his face. “How lucky for you then that I have this magical creation we call paper.”
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