This chapter was supposed to foreshadow an awful thing, but it ended up being about that awful thing instead. It's quick, painful, and the next chapter will be spent in self loathing. Hooray for Ephemer being a moron! Wait...

Thank you for reading!

Ephemer was acting rather odd that afternoon. He was far more antsier- like he had committed the worst crime of the century, and was just waiting for someone to ask him to confess. At the same time, he seemed to space out every time he caught a glance at Anora. A smile would dreamily work its way across his face until he forced himself out of his thoughts. Anora started to filter out his weird looks not long after they started to study- sure, it was weird, but it wasn't too distracting either.

"Don't tell me you're done studying already." Ephemer lightly whined when he noticed Anora putting away her books. She looked up at him and gave a gentle smile.

"I'm not leaving yet." she told him.

Ephemer let out a sigh of relief. "Good." He gave her a teasing grin before adding, "I'm not done admiring you yet."

Suffice to say, a rather bright blush appeared on Anora's face. She bashfully looked away while Ephemer laughed a bit at her expense. The moment was broken when Anora felt a sharp sting in her finger. She flinched before looking over at it. A small red bump had appeared on her finger- she must have given herself a paper cut.

"What's wrong?" Ephemer immediately asked.

"Paper cut." she replied with a little shake of her head.

"Lemme see it." came the almost demanding return. Anora recoiled before shaking her head at him.

"It's fine." she assured him. "It's not your job to worry about me like that."

"Then what is my job, Anora?" Ephemer asked, far quicker than he meant to. "Because whatever it is, you sure have not been making it easy."

Anora gave him an odd look. "What do you mean?" she questioned.

"What don't I mean?" he replied. "I'm your boyfriend, I'm supposed to be worried over you. Right? And it's my job to keep you safe. But do you actually try to stay safe for once? Not at all. You're practically 'how can I give Ephemer a heart attack today?' You're exhausting."

"And you're not?" Anora shot back. Something was stirring inside her- something she didn't like. Was this something that Ephemer had been keeping back from her? Did she already tell him that it wasn't her job to worry about her so much? He could hurt himself. Or worse, herself.

Ephemer looked over at her. If he was genuinely surprised by her talking back, it didn't easily show it.

"I'm not as exhausting as you are." he informed her.

"You bet?" she demanded. "Maybe I don't want to be taken all over the county-side. Maybe I just want to have a movie night at the dorm. Or just sleep next to you in the morning. We do not need to go places to be a couple."

"Then I guess we're not really a couple."

"What?"

"Never mind." the young man said, quickly shaking his head and putting his things away. "Forget I said anything. See you later."

Anora jumped from her seat with an immediate cry of "No!" before quickly using herself to block Ephemer's path. He only barely looked at her.

"You're going to shut me out again." Anora pointed out. "And I don't want that. What do you mean that we're not a real couple?"

For a moment, Ephemer paused.

"What have we done since we got together?" he quietly asked her. "Routinely break the rules? Kiss a lot? Go to different places so I can see you smile just once? What are we doing, Anora? We're just… We're just a bunch of stupid kids. This isn't real love. It just… it just can't be."

"But-"

He stopped her with a darkened tone. "No. I've tried, Anora, I've tried to keep you happy and safe. And how do you thank me? You get lost during a field trip, trapped there for nearly 24 hours, coming back to campus with a sprained ankle. You go into a coma after making some mention of not trying to fight your heart anymore- and you don't even remember it! You act like you saw something a fake mirror when clearly nothing was there! Do you know how exhausting it is worrying about you all the time? Do you?!"

For this, Anora frowned. "It's not like I-" she started to argue, but Ephemer wouldn't let her finish.

"I'm done, Anora!" Ephemer shouted. "I don't ever want to see you again! From this moment on, if I see your face around campus, it'll be too soon!"

After this, the air around them was almost too heavy to bear. It took Ephemer a good minute before realizing the weight of his words. His face immediately broke from frustration to fear.

"Anora," he then tried to say- his voice hushed and terrified. "I didn't..."

Anora was still. Her eyes were trained at him with a dark glare- tears were starting to gloss over them, but she wouldn't let them fall. Her fists were tightly clenched in a rage never once seen before. Her lips were pressed into a tight line that tried very hard not to shout back at him. Instead, Anora took a step forward. Then another. When she was close enough to Ephemer, she slapped him across the face- hard.

Ephemer's eyes widened in shock. His face stung from where she had struck him, but the pain in his chest felt worse. This wasn't happening. There was no way that this was happening.

Anora said nothing to him. Instead, she started to slowly back away. At some point she spun on her heel and continued to walk away from him. Her head was down and her fists were clenched.

"Anora..." Ephemer croaked. She stopped, for only a moment, before shaking her head and continuing to walk away. Ephemer was still too stunned to follow her. This wasn't happening. This wasn't happening. This wasn't happening.

The young woman walked quite a considerate distance away before making a turn toward her dorm room. At that point, the tears she had been holding back finally started to fall. She broke into a run before she was even aware of what she was doing. She ran, and ran, and ran to her dorm with her vision slowly blurring over as she went. She wasn't even sure if she had actually closed her door before tossing herself on to her bed.

Anora cried until she couldn't feel anything at all.

She didn't know how long it took, and a part of her no longer cared. She shifted a little so she could toss her tear stained pillow off the bed and continue to lay face down on the mattress directly. Her body relaxed before she let out a long, exhausted sigh. Eventually, she turned her head to the side, just to blankly stare at her room. Ephemer had left behind certain things in her room over the past few months; study notes, favorite movies and CDs, and even a rogue shirt or two. Well, he wasn't going to get them back now. Anora was going to keep her door locked at all times- maybe even request a new door handle just to make sure his key didn't work.

Anora carefully got her body up, but didn't go anywhere at first. She couldn't stay in this room. She had to go out and do something. Finally, carefully scooting off her bed, she went to her closet and pulled out her roller skates. It was finally time to go back to where it all started.

. . .

She hadn't been to the concrete slab at all since the school year started. In a way, she didn't need to. After schoolwork, most of her time had gone to Ephemer. She and Strelitzia even spent time together at the dorms, drinking tea and talking about their day. Then there was whatever Skuld planned on doing that usually involved both her and Ephemer.

And yet, here she was again, back at the stupid concrete slab that helped start her journey. She didn't want to spend time introspecting herself- she came to skate and that was what she was going to do. Anora slowly put on her skates and made the careful step onto the slab. She did a small test to make sure her wheels would still hold a decent friction against the concrete before doing small drills. The concrete slab felt smaller than it once did. Had she gotten taller, or was it always this way and she just had got used to it?

She never did tell Ephemer why she used to hang out here. Come to think of it, she never got the chance to show him her skating abilities either. She thought that she would, way back long ago. But so many things happened after that; the formal, the play, Skuld's overdose, the summer… And then school started back up again and she and Ephemer were together. They went to so many places. He really did try to see her face light up with excitement. But he didn't need to do all that. He could have seen her smile just by bringing her a pizza and a good movie. Was she the selfish one for not wanting that?

Anora gently glided around the concrete slab, choosing to do long, stretching movements to help clear her head. It worked for only a moment. Eventually, she came to a stop in the middle of the slab. She looked numbly down at her skates, then up toward the cafeteria.

'If I see you face around campus, it'll be too soon.'

But where was she supposed to go where he wasn't? Ephemer was raised here on campus. He knew everything, and everyone, and could to get to anywhere. Maybe she should just drop out of school. Just leave one day and go back home with Kieran and Aunt Dawn. She'd disappoint everyone, though. She still had friends outside of Ephemer too, right? She had… Strelitzia. That was… that was it. Wasn't it? Did she really have no other friends on campus that weren't connected to Ephemer? Feeling her eyes starting to burn again, Anora carefully sat herself down, curled into a ball, and started to cry again.

She hated this place. She hated Ephemer. But above all, she hated herself.