A/N: Okay guys, I have SATs this Saturday. It might be a while before I get to post again, but don't forget me. I will be back!

I woke up with a start. I flipped up into the sitting position. Where was I?

I looked to my right and saw Harland. Everything from last night came flooding back.

I smiled. That was a pleasant memory.

"Harland," I murmured into his ear.

"Hrggg…." Was what what he said sounded like as he pushed his face into the pillow.

"Harland," I said again, lowering my voice.

"Yes?" He asked as his arms suddenly lashed out, snaking around my body, pulling me to him.

"You're awake!"

"I am. Now," his lips touched my neck.

"So," I started but he didn't give me a chance to finish. His lips moved over my mouth.

"Does that mean you don't take last night back?"I asked when he freed me.

He laughed and rolled over so he was on top of me.

"I may be blessed by the gods to be able to do that with you, but I'm only human," he said, his eyes somewhere between mocking and serious.

"Still, you're always so bent on age…"

"I'm over it."

"Really?"

"Yes. Now, I hate repeating myself, but are you going to spend all morning asking questions? We have to leave in an hour. Why don't we make the best of the time that we have?" but he didn't need to say everything. He had me at "yes."

The days passed and we spent every evening after we broke apart from Lydia in his bed. It all seemed so perfect. Everything clicked. I was happier and happier as the days went by and Harland seemed to have more and more energy.

Together we made quite the team out on the city. It seemed that something had been awakened in me. I could see things from directions I could not see sometimes. Id catch glimpses of what was behind me, or down the alleyway. My mind pinpointed the criminals before I could see them.

And then Harland would do the fighting. He would fight relentlessly. They could be 15 busts in a day and he would never tire.

Lydia would do her trick of finding a name for whomever it was by just what was in his purse and then cart him away single handedly to pound while me and Harland kissed in an alley with the pretense that we were searching from more rats.

The days never seemed too long, always too short. The tedious moments were only a tribute to the more exciting ones. While I would find myself wanting to be alone with Harland when we were with Lydia, the moments spent with Lydia were not painful.

She held a motherly significance to me. I didn't really hold much respect for my own mother so I let Lydia step in and take the position. I let her ninny at me, knowing I would only defy her word later. I didn't take her for granted though. She was still above me in status, I knew when to listen. Even though if I had my way I'd always be the dominant being, with Lydia I knew I had to act submissive.

She gave me a lot more credit that I deserved, opened a lot of doors for me that should be closed, and treated me with the grace and affection of a daughter.

In the morning she would hug me and tell me what a great person I was. And she would buy my midday meal on the days that we stopped and had one. She took my uniform home and washed it for me, and filed my paperwork so I didn't have to. Everything that I wished I had a mother for she was and did.

Sometimes I would think that I had to be adopted. There was no way that I and anyone in my family were related. I could see no reasoning in my sister's way of lying in her bed and withering away.

My mother didn't seem to connect with me and sometimes looked at me like she was expecting me to burst out screaming or something. She let me go everyday and she never tried to stop me. I could tell by the look on her face that she didn't want me to go but she never lifted her finger or voice to pull me back in. It was almost like she was expecting me to leave at some point. Like she knew there would come a day in which I would want to leave for good. Like my staying at home at all was charity work.

My father didn't seem to care at all about me or my well being. Yes he said he put me in the Lower City in the first place to protect me but whenever I would yell at him, accusing him of destroying my life, and he would yell back, saying that he did this for me, I could sense that there was some underlying meaning to his words. It was almost like there was another reason for him taking me here. Like it had to do with me and the attack but it wasn't about me. Just the way the words, "I'm here for you," sounded when they came out of his mouth were like a lie.

Taylor was the only one I could even fathom being related to. He shared the jubilance I had and a tendency to do the undoable but even him seemed like he came from a different set of parents than me. He spoke with a childlike tone and was always caught up in tomorrow. Now never mattered to him because he was living in what was to come.

I had a little bit more of a groundedness than that. I lived in the now. Tomorrow was unimportant to me because today was great. That was how I thought. I suppose that is why the weeks passed so smoothly and soon June was coming to a close.

I didn't take a breath too look back on things either until long after my face turned blue. In retrospect I wasn't going about things quite how I should, I should be thinking about what would come of my life when my parents decided my sentence to the Lower City was over or when Lydia found out about mine and Harland's relationship. I should have been considering the possibility of being confronted by someone I knew from a past life and how that would alter my course or how I probably should get my anti-fertility pendant checked with a medicine woman just in case but I was thinking only of Harland and passion.

Today was today and tomorrow was tomorrow. I would think about tomorrow when tomorrow came and yesterday, well that was yesterday. I had purposely made sure that I had put yesterday away once it passed because I didn't care much for pining. Reckon I was happy with Harland, I still felt hollow whenever I thought of the palace and Colin.

Life was only what I made it be. Somehow I seemed to be controlling time and my perspective of things. If I didn't want something to happen, it didn't. If I wanted something, I got my way. The entire world was becoming clay in my hands and I didn't think twice about. I should have stopped to think about that, and about how I was seeing things I shouldn't.

I should have stopped to reminisce of what made my heart beat when I saw Harland so much and I should have asked myself why I felt like something pivotal would happen before June ended.

But I was caught up in my own little world where I was with Harland and we were doing nothing but making love.