Ally squints in the golden-orange rays of sunlight peeking through the canopy of trees overhead. The sun is beginning to set, which means that soon it will be time to stop for the night.
She'd never admit this to Austin, but she doesn't think she can walk much farther before she collapses due to exhaustion and pain in her feet. She tries to distract herself by observing her surroundings and Austin, but every time it only leads to daydreaming, which is dangerous for her. Daydreaming affects her too much; it makes her long for a world that doesn't exist, makes her ache for it. It twists her stomach in knots and makes her heart pound and takes her breath away and turns her mundane reality into a nightmare.
She starts feeling dizzy. Wordlessly, she makes her way to a large tree, sets her backpack down, and sits on the ground with her back against the trunk. She leans her head back and closes her eyes, taking deep breaths and trying to get the images of magic and emotions and not knowing out of her head.
"Whoa – hey, are you okay?" She hears leaves and twigs crunching under Austin's feet as he walks over to her.
She nods, her eyes still closed, her breathing still deep, her head still spinning.
"I don't think you are. First you were crying earlier, then you went all quiet, and now you look like you're gonna pass out. Aren't Scientists supposed to tell the truth?"
"I'm just a little dizzy," she says, not moving from her position. "It's nothing."
"Are you drinking enough water?"
"Yes."
"Drink more anyway."
She hears him rummaging around in her bag, and then he taps a water bottle against the back of her hand and she takes it, downing the entire thing so he'll stop bothering her. She focuses on listening to the gentle cascade of water refilling the bottle.
Suddenly, the back of Austin's hand is on her forehead. She sits up straighter and knits her eyebrows, opening her eyes to look at him crouched beside her. "What are you doing?"
"Making sure you don't have heatstroke." He moves his hand to the back of her neck.
"I'm fine," she insists, shoving his arm away.
"It's hot out. We've been walking all day. You've been acting weird and you're dizzy. That's not a good combination."
"None of this is because of the heat or dehydration. I'm just…thinking too much," she says.
He shifts into a sitting position. "Thinking about what?"
"Scientist stuff."
"You're lying. If you were really thinking of 'Scientist stuff,' you would've explained it in exact detail to make me feel dumb for not understanding, plus you'd never consider it 'thinking too much'. Tell me what's going on. We can't help Dez if there's something wrong with you."
"There's nothing wrong with me," she tells him. Then she starts getting up. "We should keep going, anyway. We're losing daylight."
"I'm making an executive decision. We're done for the day," he says, pulling her back down.
She exhales in frustration and glares at him. "I told you I'm fine! What else do you want from me?!"
"The truth would be nice," he replies calmly.
"I'm telling you the truth. I'm fine."
She stands up, but she sees Austin wave his arm in the corner of her eye and suddenly there's a low rumbling sound and she's consumed in darkness. Then, a small orange light appears. She turns toward it, finding herself unsurprised to see that in Austin's hand burns a small fire, illuminating his face.
"Austin, this is ridiculous," she says, looking around. He seems to have formed a fairly large cave around them, but with no exit. All that surrounds them are rocks and dirt.
"What's ridiculous is you insisting that you're fine when there's obviously something wrong."
"This is a waste of time. They could be torturing Dez!"
"We'll get up early in the morning to make up for it." Austin thrusts the palm of his hand forward and downward, and the fire leaps onto the ground, growing slightly but remaining contained. It releases no smoke, only light and heat.
Ally huffs in defeat and sits back down across from Austin, glaring at him over the fire.
"For an emotionless Scientist, you look pretty angry," Austin notes.
"I feel emotions, I just don't act on them," she says, rolling her eyes.
Austin watches her, the fire making his face glow a warm orange and casting shadows under his cheekbones and around his eyes. His eyes reflect the light like miniature fires themselves from within the shadows on his face. They're light brown, almost orange because of the firelight, and they look warm, comforting, nothing like how they used to be.
She relaxes her glare and stares at the magical fire instead. She still feels Austin's eyes on her.
"I just…sometimes wish I didn't have to deal with all the expectations that come with being a Scientist," she finally admits.
Austin remains silent, but she knows he's paying full attention to what she's saying.
"I'm proud to be a prodigy. I'm not wishing away my intelligence. But feeling like I need to know everything about the world is a bit exhausting. If we don't know something, we figure it out. If we can't figure it out, we're inadequate. That's how our society works." She pauses, hoping he'll speak up and stop her from saying the cursed words on the tip of her tongue. He doesn't say a word.
"But maybe there are some things that we aren't supposed to know, like how magic works and where it comes from. And maybe there are things that we do know that we never should've known, like how to mathematically determine the most compatible mates. Of course I like knowing how the world works and figuring things out, but…I don't want to know everything." She pauses again, laughing halfheartedly to cover the way her voice is catching in her throat. "That's practically sacrilegious of me to say, isn't it? Intelligence doesn't mean knowing everything, though, right? I'm intelligent; I can figure things out and solve problems. But that shouldn't mean I have to.
"Then again, if I'm not learning everything about everything in the universe, then what kind of Scientist am I? Not knowing is unacceptable. If I'm okay with not knowing…I don't think I know who I am."
She looks up at him again, panic seizing her heart. "I'm having an existential crisis," she tells him. "I find that I want to hug you."
"That, I can do," he finally says, standing up. He walks around the fire and opens his arms.
She stands up too, her heart pounding and her legs shaking, and hugs him around his torso. He wraps his arms around her tightly, warmth radiating off his skin and enveloping her like a blanket. She closes her eyes and rests her cheek against his chest, trying to synchronize her breathing with his to calm down. He smells like lavender and pine and a tiny bit of citrus. She inhales and exhales.
He rests his chin on top of her head. "You're not a bad Scientist for not knowing everything, and you're not a bad Scientist for not wanting to," he tells her. His voice reverberates in his chest, and it comforts her. "You know so much, it'd probably take you ten lifetimes to teach it all to me. There are some things that are better off unknown. And that's okay."
"But…I like the feeling of not knowing some things," she admits quietly. "There's something wrong with me."
"Nah. You're just not a robot. And as much as you try, you never will be. So maybe you'll feel better if you accept the fact that you're human. Crazy smart, but human."
She exhales and nods. "I suppose you're right."
"Occasionally, I do say things that aren't stupid."
She finds herself with a small smile on her face as she pulls away from the hug to look up at him. "Thank you," she says.
He's wearing his own sliver of a smile. "You're welcome. Anything else you wanna talk about?"
She shakes her head, finding that she isn't quite ready to tell him about her increased fascination with magic. "Is there anything you want to talk to me about?" she asks him.
"Nope," he replies immediately. "In fact, we should both probably just go to bed."
"I suppose you're right." She kneels down and pulls the sleeping bag Austin gave her out of her backpack.
"Hopefully your existential crisis will be over by tomorrow," he says, walking to the other side of the fire and setting up his sleeping bag as well.
"Surely it will be. My mind will be rested and refreshed."
"Yeah, that. Sweet dreams, Einstein."
"We don't have a device that can control dreams with us, so you can't assume that my dreams will be sweet," she points out.
"You seem like you're feeling better already," Austin deadpans. "Goodnight."
He pulls his sleeping bag over his head. Ally exhales and crawls into her own sleeping bag. She closes her eyes, and she starts dreaming of magic before she even falls asleep.
She wakes up to bright sunlight shining red-orange through her closed eyelids. She opens her eyes and sits up, running a hand through her knotted hair. The magical cave is gone. The magical fire is out, the grass it burned over perfectly intact.
She looks over at Austin's sleeping bag. The magical boy is nowhere to be seen.
Panic immediately seizes her heart. His sleeping bag is rumpled, and his backpack sits next to it. They found him, she thinks. They found him and they took him.
She clambers out of her sleeping bag and stands up, taking a deep breath and looking around. When did he take down the rock cave that surrounded them when she fell asleep? Who took him – Scientists or bad Magicians? Where did they come from and how did they find him? Why did they leave her behind?
She scans their little campsite, searching for answers to any of her questions. Her pounding heart gradually slows to a more regular pace, though she still feels each heartbeat painfully hard against her chest. She tries to calm her mind as she focuses all her attention on figuring out what happened to Austin.
But as she looks in his sleeping bag and backpack for anything missing or any clues as to what happened, she finds herself growing more worried by the second. She isn't sure how long he'll last with his unstable magic so easily affected by his emotions without her intelligence to figure out how to conceal it or clean up the messes it makes. More troubling, she doesn't think she'll last long at all without his magic.
"Hey, what're you doing going through my stuff?" she hears from behind her.
She stands up and turns, eyes wide, her heart pounding again. There he is, standing in front of her with his arms crossed and an eyebrow raised accusingly. Perfectly safe and unscathed, except for a dark purplish smudge stained on his cheek.
"I thought we were doing that whole trusting each other thing now," he says.
She doesn't say anything. Instead, she surges forward and hugs him.
He freezes for a moment, his now-uncrossed arms hovering in the air on either side of her; she feels his chin on her head as he tilts his head down to look at her. Then slowly his arms find their way around her. She inhales the scent of lavender and pine and citrus. She exhales in relief.
"I thought someone found you and took you," she tells him.
He pulls away from her, raising his eyebrows and smiling in amusement. "I woke up to a note from my parents saying Daisy got there safely. I was writing one back thanking them, but I had to smash some blackberries to use the juice as ink, and I didn't want to wake you up. I was just a little way away."
"Well…don't do that again. I was worried."
"You were, weren't you?" he says, his smile growing. "You know, I thought last night was a rarity. I didn't realize how much of a hugger you are."
"I'm not a hugger. I'm just relieved that you're alright."
"So the emotionless Scientist feels worry and relief?"
She rolls her eyes and shoves his chest. He stumbles a few steps back, still smiling. "We've been over this, Austin."
"I'm just saying that for someone who is so adamant about your ability to be unaffected by emotions, your emotions sure do affect you."
"We're losing time," is all she says. Then she starts walking, forging ahead through the sea of trees. She hears him chuckle as he follows her.
The next few days are like carbon copies of each other. Walk all day, stop at sundown, sleep in a magical cave next to a magical fire and wake up in the morning to find the cave gone and the fire out and Austin playing with tiny blizzards or growing flowers or petting an animal and talking to it quietly. Repeat the process.
As each day lulls on and she and Austin exhaust pretty much every topic of conversation – "My favorite color is green." "Why?" "It's the color of nature." "Figures." – she loses herself in daydreams once again.
They don't all revolve around magic anymore. Many of them do: she imagines racing through the clouds on gusts of wind and growing acres of flowers and setting fire to her reality with a wave of her hand. But some of them are more realistic, just slightly altered versions of the world she lives in.
In her imaginary world, she isn't consumed with learning and knowing everything. Right now, instead of going on this journey to rescue Dez from facing the consequences of a crime he didn't technically commit, she's spending time outside with Trish and Dez and Austin, the four of them talking and laughing like the best of friends. Trish laughs as Dez and Austin compete to see who can spin more cartwheels in the grass. She laughs harder when both boys collapse to the ground, their eyes crossed, their cheeks flushed. Ally laughs too. They're all happy – they're all allowed to be happy.
Then her mind pulls her somewhere else. She's on a rooftop on a mountain, overlooking densely packed trees crawling up the mountain and a city at the base of it. Austin is grinning next to her. "What are you waiting for?" he asks. "Scared?" He nudges her toward the edge of the building. "I promise I'll catch you. You lost the game, remember? You promised."
She doesn't know what game she lost or what promise she made. But she's not scared, and she didn't know she was waiting for anything. She looks over at him. His brown eyes look back.
"We'll go together," he says decisively, and grabs her hand firmly in his. Then he steps up onto the ledge of the rooftop, pulling her up next to him. She looks at him, about to ask if he's crazy.
But she knows he wouldn't hear her. His eyes are closed. A small, closed-mouthed smile is etched on his face. Wind blows in ripples across his shirt and tousles his hair. And then he leaps off the building, his grip on her hand so firm he drags her with him.
She screams, but it's drowned out by the wind. The wind that gathers underneath them, thrusting them up into the sky. Austin laughs, and she finds herself laughing too. Music starts playing from somewhere. He grabs her other hand and they dance in and out of the clouds.
She feels a million emotions. In the daydream, she doesn't have to shove them into the tiny, organized, dark compartments in the back of her mind. Here, she lets them consume her, lift her and Austin higher into the air, their laughs echoing off the side of the mountain.
But outside the daydream, she can't do any of that. It isn't real. She shoves the million bubbling emotions into the compartments in the back of her mind and padlocks them shut. She looks over at Austin and wonders how many more emotions those compartments can keep at bay.
hey guys sorry this chapter wasn't very exciting but cutesy moments? it took a long time to write because i didn't know what to write lol i kinda have an idea for the next chapter so hopefully it won't take as long. also i miss talking to u guys i feel so disconnected from all of u lately pls pm me or something so we can chat also if u read this tell me ur favorite color in a review and why bc its fun learning cute random things about people ok thanks for reading i love u guys see u next time