"Hey, you. Wake up." Spencer felt her entire body move back and forth in response to the grip of foreign fingers on her arm. Speech failing her still slumbering tongue, only a groan was emitted from tired lips. The combination of her exhaustion and her avid devotion to sleep made her unreceptive of this intrusion of privacy.
Again, she was shaken. This time by her shoulder, and vigorously so. She batted off the offending hand.
"Come onnn. Get up!" That voice was an agitated whisper.
Spencer barely managed to fend off sleep in response, cracking one eyelid open to be met with a bruised face creased with irritation. She failed to fully register who it was, even if the memory of warm brown eyes and a moment caught in time flashed to the forefront of her mind.
"Who… who're you?" Her voice sounded almost drunk.
"The girl from the shed, remember? With the doctor?"
A pregnant pause followed as Spencer tried to coax her mind into functioning. Recognition dawned on her as the name that should never have left her lips or memory, returned.
"Ohhh, Ashley."
The ghost of a smile crossed Ashley's lips.
"Yes, Ashley. Now get up."
That was a shock. Almost enough to snap Spencer out of her sleep-induced fog. Almost, but not quite. Spencer was not an easy person to wake.
"Where are we going?"
Through the darkness, Spencer saw Ashley roll her eyes in contempt. "To the moon. Now just get up and come with me."
"But aren't we gonna get in trouble? I don't wanna get in trouble…"
Ashley made an exasperated sound. "Come on, no one's going to catch us."
"No, but we will. I don't wanna see you get in trouble again." Spencer tried to sound grave in her sleep-inebriated state.
"Oh, God, please no. You're one of those bible-thumping, Jesus-worshipping, tree-hugging, 'I love everyone,' follow-the-rules-and-play-it-safe kind of girls, aren't you?" Ashley's voice bordered on theatrical.
"How do you know I worship Jesus and… and… thump the bible! I don't even go to church!" Spencer protested. She tried to sit up on her rickety board of a bed.
Ashley smirked, an expression riddled with zealous confidence and guile. She quirked up an eyebrow. "Fine then. Prove it. Jesus lover."
Spencer stayed silent and glared at her.
"Just come on, we don't have all night." Having expended her patience, Ashley grabbed Spencer's arm and tugged her from her bed. She stumbled out of her elongated position, nearly dying from shock of the cold. Ashley looked at her as if she couldn't believe what she was seeing, then snapped out of her surprise. "Here, take the coat." She snatched the ugly green sweatshirt up from the foot of Spencer's bed and threw it at her, hitting Spencer in the face. "Now come on."
Spencer barely had time to put on the hiking boots the facility had supplied her with before being dragged forward by her arm. It was actually quite painful.
"Ouch."
"Oh, sorry." Ashley released her grip.
They crept out of the tent, feet brushing the soil with silent steps as they passed the slumbering group leaders. Only one was not in bed, and he was slouched over the dwindling embers of a fire. He appeared to have dozed off. No worries there.
They walked in silence once they made their way outside, their breaths hushed in the frigid winter air, movements careful so as to avoid the creation of any revealing noises. They were cautious and tense, alert to any movement that might disrupt their forbidden outing. Spencer was so caught up in escaping unseen that she was momentarily oblivious to the gravity and portent of this situation.
Ashley, more familiar with the feelings of peril that threatened, broke her focus to glance at Spencer. "You know, I usually don't cuss that much." Her statement broke the quiet.
It took her a second to realize what she was referring to. Spencer, raising an eyebrow, offered Ashley a sidelong glance that questioned the girl's sanity for bringing up such a random, irrelevant topic right now. "Okay… not that I care."
"Just thought I'd, you know, clear that up."
Spencer, bemused, returned her attention to the task at hand. "All right, well, it's cleared. Not that there was ever anything to clear in the first place. Because unlike you think, I'm not a bible thumper."
"Uh-huh, sure."
Spencer gave her a menacing glare.
"Where are we going, anyway?"
"There's this place I saw today when I had to go to my designated space. I thought I'd check it out and see what it looks like at night. I didn't want to go alone and I figured you could use some, um… help… adjusting."
"Your… space?" Spencer gave her a quizzical look.
"Yeah. You know, the place… Oh, right, you only got here today."
Instead of explaining, Ashley remained silent, suddenly pensive. Spencer didn't press for details. She had other questions of greater priority nagging at her mind.
"So how long have you been here?" Spencer asked.
"Three days."
"Wow, only three days and you've already started trouble?" Spencer laughed lightly and Ashley couldn't help but spread her lips in a sheepish smile.
"Yeah, I guess I know how to make an impression on people." Spencer could only shake her head in response.
Their walk had grown almost careless as the distance between them and the tent grew, so much so that they were unprepared for the loud rustle that sounded from a bush beside them. Spencer, closest to the bush, slammed right into Ashley in her fright as the words "Oh shit!" breathed from Ashley's lips. They both ducked down instinctively, thinking it was either a wild and ferocious animal or, worse, one of their group leaders. A few seconds passed before Spencer's wildly beating heart began to calm. She turned to Ashley.
"I thought you said you didn't cuss." It was a hiss.
"I thought you said you didn't care." Ashley offered Spencer her smug smirk, once again.
Touché.
"Besides, I do cuss. Just usually not that much."
Spencer just rolled her eyes.
After a few moments of weighted silence, Ashley got up from her awkward position on the ground, checking to make sure the coast was clear. She looked back to Spencer. "It's okay, it's clear." Spencer rose beside her. They continued their walk, both a little more cautious in their step.
Spencer was the first to break the careful silence between them as they slipped beneath the boughs of trees. "So… what happened to your face?" She ducked her head a degree and gave Ashley a glimpse of her wide and innocuous eyes. Her words were met with Ashley's frowning lips and furrowed brow. Her entire demeanor had shifted. Apparently, Spencer's attempt at nonchalantly broaching the subject that had been on her mind since their encounter in the doctor's shed was unsuccessful. She was always abrupt about that kind of thing, as if she hadn't had the social schooling to know how to slide into delicate conversation and ease her way through sensitive topics. Instead, she threw the words into the open like a jeweler casting gems carelessly across a counter, uncaring as to whether they would cascade onto the floor or be viewed by potential customers.
"Uhh, nasty fall. The terrain here is brutal, let me tell you." A few steps of brittle quiet ensued before Ashley stopped and turned to Spencer. Spencer felt as if she had run into a boulder, or perhaps as if her boots had suddenly grown roots and refused to part with the soil. Her attention was seized by the graveness of Ashley's expression. "Let's not talk about it, okay?"
Spencer hardly heard her, too focused on pleading eyes that persevered through the darkness to convey their intent.
"Okay."
As gracelessly as Spencer had planted the seed of that conversation, Ashley smoothly snatched it up and concealed it. They resumed their walk, their silence suspended between them.
Both were lost in the mazes of their own thoughts before they finally approached Ashley's destination. A smile transformed Ashley's brooding lips as her recognition of the place filled her. Her voice was excited and a little breathy as she turned to Spencer, walking sideways for a few paces as she regarded her companion. "Spence… we're here. This is it." Her teeth flashed before she turned and disappeared through the frame of two tree trunks.
For Spencer, walking through that last defense of forest was like leaving a heavy fog. Beneath the cover of ancient pines and trees whose naked arms now carried the weight of the season's snow, she had felt clouded and claustrophobic. Darkness had folded upon her like a box closing around a mewling kitten. The trees had been observing her, calculating her reactions and mocking her situation in this fated correction camp. There were always eyes on her, ripping at her flesh, tearing her apart, delving into stubborn secrets that clung to the comfort of concealment. Even the doctor's gentle touches and wordless glances had felt probing and provocative beneath the outstretched arms of that unwelcoming forest, a place where the darkness was oppressive instead of safe.
With her first step from the trees, she felt as if she were lifting a veil from troubled eyes and pallid skin. An empty meadow spread before her with its magnificent mantle of ivory. She felt exposed on its flawless surface, but beautifully so, where secrets were not judged and deviations not countered. Her body became drenched in silver, pouring from the cup of the moon suspended in the sky, blonde waves becoming a sallow gold beneath the unearthly light cascading from above. Her eyes were immediately drawn to the sliver of the moon lounging in the sky, distracted only by the massive congregation of stars—so many that they overwhelmed her eyes with swirling myths and fantasies. She was lost for a moment in their figures, stunned by their winking brightness and glimmering brilliance. They seemed to dance before her eyes, Auriga swinging in his chariot and Lepus the hare bounding through empty paths of light. Monoceros, with his bright horn and beauty, galloped to life where usually he was shrouded in the darkness of invisibility and mystery. Orion, to his left, stood strong and familiar, his sword suspended at his belt and arm flashing through the air in true warrior fashion.
She stood entranced at the border of a meadow, the snow glistening before her like a sea of countless diamonds. Spencer's breath was lost somewhere deep inside her at the sight, caught and withheld from lips that were parted in awe. She had lost the ability to breathe, completely enraptured by the scene before her. It was all so unreal that she found she had also lost her ability to move, stranded at the edge as if the beauty were too great to allow her passage to its center.
Then there was Ashley, who was standing inside that beauty, wrapped up in it so that she, too, with her ignited waves of brown hair and flashing hazel eyes, was a part of that fantastic tapestry. The moment she had bounded beyond the border, she had whirled to embrace that beauty, to be sewn up into a patchwork quilt of revelation and splendor. They were enveloped in this moment, lost in a ripple in time that was there just for them. And now Ashley was walking inside of that moment, treading through their private globe as she broke from her stance, stepping across their carpet of white gems toward Spencer. The smile that was pressed against her full lips was soft and radiant, comforting and endearing on a face that was so swollen with pain. Spencer felt her approach, feeling drawn to her as if by some magnetic force, pulling her out of the sky to land somewhere betwixt reality and fantasy as sapphire became lost in chocolate brown.
"It's pretty, isn't it?" Ashley's voice was reverent, as if by speaking too loudly, her words might splinter their calm. Spencer was surprised to find the sting of tears in her eyes. The world was blurred with the gloss of them, distorted by salty liquid. She blinked them away, slowly, viewing Ashley through the luster of those hazy lenses. She felt as if she was seeing everything through the film of those unshed tears, and not just looking, not just casually glancing, but really seeing the world that encapsulated them both. She found every curve of Ashley's face visible to her, vision tracing the lofty grooves of sloping cheekbones and the softness of cheeks that were flushed with the cold. Her face, caught in an upward tilt, was bathed in moonlight, illuminating eyes that held all of eternity in their depths. Spencer found herself as lost in them as she had been amongst the many constellations roaming the sky, unable to break away from the startling vision of amber and gold-flecked irises. Her attention was diverted only when those soft lips parted in preparation of speech, lips determined to fluctuate through the motions of countering the wetness coating Spencer's eyes. She felt the sudden urge to silence that roving tongue, the need to return a smile to somber lips. She needed to be that reason that they regained their former lilt. She was rushing, hastening to beat the sounds that threatened to shatter the icy purity of that moment--theirmoment.
"Beautiful It's beautiful." Her gaze did not stray from Ashley's, snagged there as if by some unseen line. And maybe, just maybe, it wasn't the stars and the meadow of glittering pearls before her that her words referred to—words that were made brave beneath the exposure of moonbeams and starlight upon the bared flesh of the meadow. Maybe the scene was but an ember when measured to a greater, more vibrant flame. And there, the smile, it returned, and Spencer, unable to deny its presence, could not help but return the expression through the dampness of emotions that refused to be stemmed.
Deep in the communion of night, Spencer and Ashley remained entranced, tangled in shared smiles and locking eyes. And all the while, the night spun on, unnoticed, around them.