Disclaimer: I want, but I don't own. Don't taunt me like this, God!
Warnings: Not much. A fast update! :D
A/N: Okay. This is a quick update. I was supposed to update my other stuff first, but... I got on this Gundam Wing high, and didn't know what to do about it since I didn't have any current stories to work on, and I didn't have any ideas for a new one, so... I just started working on this instead.
:n:
Her face swam through his mind like so many tall and flickering white candles, giving off a last burst of heat and light before falling into billowing gray smoke.
Rath saw, for the first time in eons, teasing laughter glowing in her dark eyes. The contours of her face were still round with youth in his image, her fair skin unnaturally pale.
The drizzle turned into a tourent.
He watched as the girl he was seeing as though through a sheet of opaque silver suddenly took on a life of her own. She blinked, smiled, and stood, her body materializing out of the colorless void around her.
Then, so slowly that the change was not at first apparent, she grew.
Her height stayed the same, and if asked, Rath wouldn't have been able to give a clear answer as to what he envisioned. Just that where there had once been a round-faced little girl, her long black hair falling in rippling waves down her back, now stood an older figure. A teenaged girl of about his age. Her face was sharper, her eyes slimmer, but it was without a doubt the same person, only aged by a decade.
A half-blink in the life of a star.
The cold began to cut more sharply into Rath's hand, and he became aware that frost was appearing around it, drawing jagged patterns on the window glass.
He made no move, however, and stayed still, touching the iced plane in front of him.
Her face was inscribed upon it.
He couldn't leave now. Not now, when he had finally come to the conclusion that something was happening. Not when he had finally allowed his defenses to slip, just wide enough to catch a glimpse of what settled for his past.
Even as he thought this, as his resolution grew stronger, he became increasingly aware that his mental image was no longer just that.
The glass he had used as a parchment to project his memory onto had responded with an image in turn.
Squinting through the frost that appeared unnaturally fast, obscuring his vision, Rath made out the shape of his lawn.
There was a girl standing there.
Startled and with a rising feeling of apprehension, Rath suddenly spun about, racing for the door.
Sprinting down the hallway, it was a mere few seconds before he thrust open his front door, stopping, frozen, in his tracks.
A small corner of his mind pointed out through the haze that he had been rather hoping it would all come out to a hallucination. A dream.
But there she was, now facing away from his room, towards him.
Her hair, he dimly noted, was brown again, long and straight as he had originally remembered.
They shared a joint gaze for a pause in the earth's rotation, her irises sealed, but his wide and questioning. The only answer he was to get was a cold collected stare, without the slightest flicker of empathy or hope.
Then the almost tangible line between then was broken, inexplicably, by her. She glanced towards the ground, fighting some inner demon back.
Encouraged, Rath took a step forward, his height dropping as he moved off the upper landing to a lower cement stair.
She looked up at him once more, and he was stopped in his tracks once again by what he saw.
There had been no change.
Her eyes still held glinting chips of ice, pieces of hail.
"Of snow," a muted voice rang in his mind.
It was stomach clenching, but he found himself physically unable to turn away from the sight, drawn in by a morbid fascination. Rath watched as she slowly and calmly raised her left arm, bending it, and tilting it's hand towards her lips. Her first two fingers brushed her skin, and her mouth opened in a whisper, one he was unable to hear through the falling of endless torrents of ice cold water.
"Wind."
Out of the chain mail curtain separating them, a gust struck up, quickly raising to hurricane speeds. It tore past him, catching him off guard and sending him slamming to his knees on the stone hard false ground beneath him. Swirling around her, whipping her hair, her dress, it's speeds rose impossibly faster, condensing and taking on an almost visible appearance.
Then a flame-burst of red tore across his vision, and when Rath was able to see clearly once more, she had vanished, taking with her the eerily animated winds.
Rath stepped forward as the rain dimmed, and returned to it's misty drizzle, wandering out into his dew covered lawn. He stood where she stood, staring out into the empty street.
A dry laugh caught in the back of his throat, and he realized what he was doing. He really was loosing it. Or maybe... He shook his head. No need to conjure up an impossible fiction to explain... To explain what? This? None of what had happened in the one day would be able to be satisfactorily explained away with rules and logic. It required...
"Tales of adventure, harrowing conflict, and enlightening moments of self-realization."
The words hung on the still air, and Rath let a note of shock enter his shell. He hadn't meant to speak aloud. And he didn't know where the words had come from.
Unwilling to search for more answers and come up with more uncomfortable questions, Rath made it a point not to investigate his surroundings any further as he made his pointedly steady way back inside the house.
If he had looked, however, he would have noticed the thick mat of violet clouds hovering miles above, drenched in black light and swirling almost unnoticeably.
He also would have noticed a pair of jet black eyes, much like the small buttons they masqueraded as, watching him intently through the thinning frost on his bedroom window.
:n:
:stretches: Wow, that... Did not take a very long time. Okay! I have the next chapter planned out, too, and... :grins: It's something a couple people have been asking for.
Capella: It is a good song. Look for it on ITunes. n-n I like chapter names too... If only because it makes it easier for me to figure out what chapter of a fic I was on last. Oh, did you ever read "A Barrel of Laughter, a Vale of Tears"? Good book. There's this one chapter called "Night of the Frogs", and.. Well... :cracks up: You really need to read it. At least that chapter.
Kat: See, see?! It was NOT another four months! :pleased with self:
Alyson Metallium: :snickers: Cesia came. And made him more confused. XD
Charna: ...That sounds like "It's a Beautiful Life"... That was a good/sad movie. Only because we watched it in 6th grade, all the boys kept making rude comments about how he should have died... :sniff: And thanks!
The Shadowess: :shifty eyes: Okay... Maybe he is going crazy... But in that case, Cesia's a stalker. And Rune's gonna appear delusional/obsessed in the next chapter. Yeah... Let's just stick with the non-crazy version, if only to make things easier.
:n:
Aw, c'mon. Tell me how I did. If it sucked, I won't ever know until you tell me...