The Broken Wishing Star
001: Crash.
Evan presses down hard on the accelerator and they take flight, soaring across the snow like birds of prey in a haunting, starless sky. For that one moment they're weightless, cheating gravity, and his laughter spills over, an enchanted sound in the endless crush of silence.
Time freezes. In the space of a second, laughter is replaced by frozen, bitter screams. Wheels spin. The world tilts on a broken axis, spiraling away to somewhere far beyond their reach.
Suspended in the midnight shadows, Evan closes his eyes, crosses his fingers and waits for everything to come crashing back down.
002: Dim.
Pain is the first thing he feels, slow and insidious, creeping over his body. Something is pinning his left leg into place, something heavy, and every time he tries to move a sharp, angry twinge shoots through the muscles in his thighs.
Hoarse words freeze themselves solid in the numbing midnight air, red and raw with unshed tears. "Dylan? Dylan, are you okay?"
The clouds shift, letting a small finger of moonlight trickle through the fogged-up windows. At least he can see properly now, but it does nothing to alleviate the sudden dimness that has settled over his heart.
003: Futile.
If he ignores the protest from his leg, he can just about stretch out far enough to grasp her hand. Gently, he trails his fingers up her wrist to check for her pulse and barely feels it, a faint but steady throb just beneath her skin.
"Dylan, please. Please wake up," he squeezes her hand with all the strength he has left, but it's futile. She won't respond to anything, no matter how hard he tries.
She's lost; to him, to the world, maybe even to herself, and he doesn't know how to bring her back.
004: Erratic.
Deep inside his chest, his heart jumps and pounds against his ribs like a red-hot hammer. The pain is excruciating, but it's dulled a little by a desperately erratic sensation of hope. She's alive and breathing and still with him for now, and that thought alone gives him something to hold onto.
"Dylan!" he cries out one final time, a gut-wrenching sob laced with the jewels of every tear he's ever shed for her.
The reply is no more than a whisper on the backdrop of the raging silence, but nonetheless, it's there. "Evan?"
005: Loved.
First he laughs. Then he's fairly sure he cries.
"Dylan! You're okay!" wiping the tears from his eyes, he lets relief bubble up inside his chest and soothe away the burning pain. He reaches through the darkness to touch her cheek, raining soft kisses against her lips, and smiles at her confusion. "You were knocked out. I was terrified,"
"I'm alright," she says, returning his smile weakly.
Fresh tears begin to speckle his skin, and he holds onto her hand like he'll never let go. "I love you,"
She squeezes back fiercely. "I love you too,"
006: Soft.
For a while they just lie there together, holding hands. Evan's leg is still trapped, and Dylan can't move either. The ATV has collapsed in around them, caging them, with no possible way of getting free.
Their situation is hopeless. Alone. Lost. They can't call for help. They have no way of knowing when they'll be found, or if they'll still be alive when that time comes.
All that's left to do is talk and dream and stare up at the sky, darkly baleful and unforgiving under a layer of soft, pastel-grey clouds.
007: Hold.
It starts to snow. Not a blizzard, but fat, white snowflakes. They seem so serene, so tranquil. Unhurried. Evan envies them that.
Occassionally, a snowflake will land inside the car and melt into oblivion. Dylan wrinkles her nose as one lands on the tip of it; Evan chuckles and kisses it away. Then, although it strains his trapped leg almost unbearably, he reaches out and puts his arms around her, holding her close.
He finds himself relaxing a little, drifting away. The pain is starting to fade.
It's going to be alright, he thinks, with a secret, silent smile.
008: Shackles.
Sleep turns to nightmares. He wakes up sweating, unable to distinguish between dreams and reality, alone and terrified in his fabricated distortion.
Not quite alone. The figure beside him whispers sweet words into his ear, soothes him with tender kisses and calms his racing heart. Slowly, the shadows are melting, and the shackles fall away.
Even as dawn sets in, however, part of the darkness still lingers on. They're stuck here with no food or water, and only the faintest chance of rescue.
This is a nightmare just like any other, only this time, he can't wake up.
009: Broken.
If Dylan's scared, she doesn't let on. She reassures him when he breaks down, tells him it'll be okay like she actually believes it, no traces of doubt in her eyes. He, on the other hand, is terrified.
This is the middle of Alaska, about as far away from civillisation as you can get. The others will be miles away, still tracking down the anomaly. In a few hours, they'll return to the meeting point and find it empty; maybe then they'll come looking.
But until then, he's stuck here, broken, shivering and terrified.
010: Precious.
By the third day, Dylan's the only thing keeping him alive. They're both cold and weak with hunger, but in the blurred lines of her body he finds his salvation. By now, her mask is starting to crack, and their tears blend together, a precious alloy of comfort.
It's almost more reassuring to see that she's scared too. They both need each other now, and that mutual dependence keeps them alive. Her heartbeat gives him life, whilst his arms return her strength. Tender, heated kisses reintroduce colour to a newly greyscale world.
Together, they can survive.
011: Odds and Ends.
Memories flare alight. They talk in hushed whispers, reliving days gone by. Evan talks of hopeless dreams, crushing parents, a childhood lost in science. Dylan remembers isolation, desperate loneliness, an irrational determination to somehow change the world.
It's nothing more than fragments, odds and ends from seperate worlds, but it keeps them going. Evan's first attempt at riding a bike; a crash-landing in a holly bush. Dylan manipulating the razor wire, trying to free a trapped wolf pup.
It's all so trivial, but it offers them the freedom they need from the carnage of their lives.
012: Tea.
It's been five days. They're both hypothermic, on the very edge of consciousness. Evan's barely able to talk. For some strange reason, he finds himself craving tea.
He's always hated tea.
Perhaps this marks the start of a slow descent into madness; the ghost by his side is the last link he holds to sanity. All he wants now is to fall into a deep, long, sleep, away from the cold and the hunger and the pain.
But if he lets himself fall asleep, he's lost, maybe forever, and he won't wake up again.
013: Twisted.
He's on the brink of death when he hears it, and whilst he can't discern what it is or where it's coming from, he's certain there's someone out there.
"Dylan?"
"I heard it too," she murmurs timidly. Neither has the energy to call out in anything louder than a hoarse whisper, so they lie there and let the tension electrify them. Evan's hands are shaking, his head spinning, and he clutches Dylan tight against his chest.
Then he hears a low grunt. Footsteps, too heavy to be human.
More like a dinosaur, in fact.
014: Echo.
The roof of the truck rips away, exposing them to the night. For a brief moment Evan sees the impression of scales, one cold, reptilian eye, but then the inky blackness of the sky seeps through, blurring it.
They're going to die. The dinosaur's found them and even if they could get free, both are too weak to run.
Echoes fill his head with fear, desperate hallucinations, and he clutches at Dylan's hand like a lifeline. Seconds pass with nothing to show; by this point, all he wants is for the whole thing to be finally over.
015: Soothe.
"I love you," Dylan mutters, her eyes squeezed shut.
He kisses her forehead and drifts down to her lips, the ice cold fire traversing his own. "I love you too,"
The predator's teeth tear through the ATV once again, a collision of flesh and rotting enamel. A shooting star flares across the sky; a wishing star, just seconds too late.
Sated, the dinosaur vanishes into the night.
A moment passes, rich with silence, and then a torch cuts through the air. Mac shakes snow from his boots and shivers loudly, blinded by blissful oblivion. "Hello? Is anybody out there?"
So I was working on Anthem of the Angels (honestly! I'm still going with that...just very, very slowly) when this little plot bunny suddenly jumped into my head. And I had a collection of drabble prompts taken from LiveJournal which I've been meaning to use for a while and just seemed to fit so perfectly...and this was born.
Just a little note, each of these is exactly 100 words according to 's word counter. Also, this one hasn't been beta-ed, so any mistakes are my own; if you do see any and could point them out to me then that would be great!