Part Two

"Every action is followed by an equal and opposite reaction."

-Newton's Laws of Motion

Chapter One: Sunshine's Flower

Loneliness that is not truly loneliness, but is really emptiness, falls flat on blank minds.

Lightness faded, and darkness prevailed, only to be triumphed once more by light. As such, radiance fell from the sky that morning on top of Lily Evans' thoughtless body. Dreams morphed and colors shifted until, finally, the glow became too brilliant, and Lily's eyes awoke. Pickled emerald met honeyed-yellow gold, and all stirred with the small girl's sighs.

But darkness fell on her mind, only two simple words echoing from the dreary chambers within. Lily. James. But two words do very little on an empty conscious, and such was Lily's emptiness that the meanings of such words, such names, escaped her. All they were was words, and so they fell away from her, still echoing rather like a warming drumbeat, but far, far away.

Sitting quickly, she reveled at her place in the snow. Beauty. Everything was beautiful. Nothing but the snow, and the air, and the sunlight could ever be so wondrously simple- or so dangerously complex. Her life lay in the hands of Mother Nature, but of all the things that seemed just beyond her fingertips, all the memories that refused her mind, she knew this fact better than any other.

One plus one equals two.

All the austere facts she ever had come to know came to lie before her eyes, streaming into her, taking her senses with written words and simple sciences, but she could not grasp their meaning.

Why did Juliet not search for her Romeo, and not die in his arms instead?

She swallowed back the thoughts.

"I cannot believe her. Fucking lord! I can't believe she ran! Bloody idiot thing to do! She doesn't even know the landscape."

Voices came; strange ones that somehow seemed to not be so strange, lost but not gone. Butter rays on sunshine fell on another pair of heads, and Lily only listened to the rather loud, seemingly swelling voices. She was only vaguely aware of the grass falling from her hair and the earthy bed beneath her. More intent was she on who she was than where she was.

It did not even come to her to question why she was.

"Prongs, mate, if she ran, she ran. Good riddance, I say, and you should do the same. There's not much more to do than that."

To Lily's barren eyes, shaggy hair shook in the distance. Squinting slightly, more followed; a leg, an arm, a muscled torso, a right thigh. His body came into existence. A chiseled face, Adonis personified. Lily felt her lose herself in hazel eyes that would not take her in.

"Fuck off, Sirius, and stop baiting me. I'm not gonna bite."

The god's lips moved, taking his face and twisting it into a distorted pain of what it had been before. Sweat fell from his hair. He seemed far from home.

The second voice began to resonate. Sirius' words tumbled precisely as they'd formed in a sort of cruel but painless offense. "Go find your fucking princess- find whatever the fuck you want to- but you're not gonna find what you're looking for. The girl's not real, man. She's a fantasy, a deception, but never real. You're bullshit. "

The god shook his head once more, walking on, still feeling his friend's unmoving eyes on his back before they fell away in the opposite direction. He continued, and Lily lay down to sleep, seemingly many miles away but really just a heartbeat.

Snow completed her hideaway from all the watching world. White lay to all direction but down where she lay on the perfect verdant grass. As sleep took her once more, she didn't dare question insatiable thoughts. How? Where? Who? But most of all, why. Why her? Why now? Why ever? But that only led to more questions, more questions she was unable to answer.

But to James' hazel eyes, scarlet hair hung like blood to pure white, and that was too sore a sight to miss. That hair, that hair he'd take to his grave as the most beautiful of colors, could never go unnoticed by a boy in love. Worry stole him further than before.

"Lily!"

His eyes met hers in open agreement, and then hers clouded, darkened by confusion.

"My savior?" she asked.

He shook his graceful head. "Never, Lil,"

"But how could be anyone but? Have you come to answer my questions?"

His forehead clinched in wrinkles. His past words of Easter's eve loomed far too close to heart. He felt dirty, blacked, sad. She's a prude, James; get over her. He couldn't help but wonder if the girl before him, the girl he thought he knew so well, was really one and the same as his unbreakable Lily. She looked so shattered.

"Well, are you?"

"What?" his words felt dumb inside his mouth. Nothing seemed right. Things weren't supposed to be like this. He was supposed to kiss her on Easter night. It was supposed to be perfect. He wasn't supposed to fall in love. She wasn't supposed to be here. Everything, everything, was shattering. Even him.

Beautiful and smart. That's a dangerous combination.

The words floated behind her eyes before the wind blew them all away.

"I assume you are god. Obviously I'm dead, aren't I? I can't imagine this is hell, and you look god enough to me. So can you help?"

James snorted. "You don't believe in god."

"Says who, you?"

He gave a little nod, letting his hair shake into his eyes. How could he be anything but a god? There was a point at which mortal perfection could not cross, and he was waltzing further past it with every passing second. She inhaled a gasp as his bangs brushed long, noir lashes stemming from the muddle of his eyes. So lovely.

"I'm no god, and you will never be an angel."

Only a goddess. A melancholy goddess.

"But can you save me just the same?" she pleaded of him, squeezing back warm teardrops that threaten to treat her cheeks to liquid misery.

Pulling out a pack of Marlboros, he bent to her level and offered her a cigarette. She took it without question, desperately trying not to let her naïveté bear itself to such a god.

Faces stole her eyes until her memory fell on one boy in particular. James Potter.

"Sure,"