Yayy! Enjoy. Sorry for such a long wait...

Sometimes the world become a re-incarnation of all of your fears and that's the way it was some weekend days when Jane woke up before the sun had set and stayed all through the night with a blanket tucked around her feet and her brain so fuzzy that the characters seemed more real than her sleeping sister; just feet away. Skye would always wake in the early morning and set the journal aside.

"Come on." She would say. "The world won't wait forever."

Around the back of the school the shadows hung like tapestries on the old bricks and the thick snow was dotted with footprints from those who would surely have damp sneakers by now. Skye rounded the corner with her light eyes focused on the flagpole, both hands holding the straps of her backpack in place.

"Jane." She called, breaking her gaze only once to glance at me. "Come on, Rosalind has to pick Batty up at four."

"Okay." I said. The shoulder of my bag bit.

"Afternoon." She said as we fell into step. "How was your day?"

Shrug, Jane. Push down the bitter until it takes up residence in your stomach. It's better have acid there than watch it drip off your chin.

I shrugged. My mind flickered to Bio and then away again. I clenched my gut.

"You?"

She grinned. "Mr. Martins was out sick, and the sub let us do whatever we wanted."

"So you talked to Jeffrey?"

"What? I did my trig and then-"

I waited. Paused for breath.

"Yes okay fine. Talked to Jeffrey."

I smiled. Inhaled. It didn't reach the well of my stomach.

"I knew it! How is he?"

"Good. He's learning a new piece on the piano. Supposedly after this his piano teacher is going to start playing gigs with him or something. He said she's lovely with deft fingers; quote unquote."

I smiled hard at the sidewalk. Eternally testing. Acting. If my writing career never worked out I'd go act. But first I had to get over this damn little obstacle. Skye looked at me.

"You sure you're okay? You seem strange."

"Yeah." I tried to meet her gaze but skittered down again. "I think I'm gonna head to Quigley Woods for a walk though. Will you relieve Rosalind? I'm sorry, it's kind of my job but-"

"It's fine." Skye looked at me. Earnest. "Be back for dinner?"

"Before." I fake-shivered in my sweater, trying to smile. "It's cold."

She nodded and started walking again. I watched the back of her snow boots touch the sidewalk and lift again as she walked away.

Quigley Woods was a friend to my feet as I walked through the comforting old twisty trees and through to my favorite place to go. The rock was there- split down the middle by some great travesty.

"See?" I said aloud. "In the grand scheme of things, a Bio Midterm doesn't matter that much at all."

But even as I said it, my cheeks; once just pale and cold, were streaming with soft tears. I slumped down to let it pass, sitting on my backpack and resting my feet together on the snow. My hair came down out of it's bun and fell around on my face as I sat.

"Watch the fair maiden as her sobs shake all the way to the center of the earth, where freedom and peace are the king and queen and midterms are jailed." I laughed through the hole in my stomach and pressed my cheek against the rough stone.

It took a long time for the storm to pass, and there the stone creatures emerged and held council, there the birds returned for the summer and turned away; realizing that the woods they'd left behind was a prisoner now.

"As am I." I murmured to the roots. "As am I."

"Talking to yourself?"

I jumped. Skye held in her laugh at the sight of my face. "Damn." She said quietly. "Those wretched males again?"

I shook my head. "Just-"

"Uhoh."

I turned to look questioningly at her. Her face was pale and close. Several years before, I had called her aura a mirage, something that raised a questioning eyebrow from both her and Daddy, but it was true- with a cover of hazy destruction that simmered with her drawn eyebrows and curled smirk, her face betrayed her quick wit the instant you saw her. That was the thing about Skye; whenever you looked at her you could see something burning in her face; some kind of fiery determination that I had always lacked.

She smiled as gently as she could. "You need one of those crazy hermit thingies, don't you?"

I started to smile; just on the edges. "The bridge?"

The creek that bordered the dangerous side of Quigley Woods fell over the sides of roots and meandered through boulder fields before it reached the small bridge that, worn down from years of footsteps and sleet, creaked slightly as it landed on each of the sagging shores. Trees hadn't shielded the very middle from the snow, but the tracks were only from our boots. Skye and I sat stretched out on the crest, our knees almost touching, our backs to the clapboard railing. I was studying the surface of the creek from above when Skye cleared her throat.

I looked over. She was peeling an orange, sitting casually with her face tilted up toward the sky. With a disdainful finger, she flicked a peel toward the current below. I watched the bright color dim as it was dragged underwater in its passage around one of the icy stones.

"Are we waiting for something?"

"I have a question." I waited.

"Do you think this is…" She paused. Another orange peel fell toward the water.

Geronimo... I stifled a smile.

"-diagnosably therapeutic?" She looked over at me, a smile starting to fill her figure. "I mean, don't get me wrong, you've always been-"

"Esoteric?"

"Selectively permeable."

I sighed. "You've lost me."

She grinned; quickly. "Jane… Selectively permeable. Like the cell membrane; it only lets smaller particles through. But if… say, there's hypotonic solution and too much water- it deflates."

I waited.

She looked up at the trees again. "You can deal with a lot of stuff-"

"Stuff?" I said.

"Yeah. Stuff. You know." She thought for a moment. "Like switching schools. Or- I don't know! You choose what you want and everything else turns away. Explain it however you want. And then so much comes and you burst. Or, actually- going with the case of hypotonic solutions in cells- you deflate."

"Ok."

"So this is us filling you back up with- with the right concentration of solute again. Scientifically impossible."

I nodded.

"But it works."

I watched the mirage of her face burn slightly. "I get it."

"Really?" The smirk was back. I hit her hard on the forearm and pulled my knees up to my chest.

"Well, no. Not the sciency stuff. But, the other part."

She bit her lip.

"The part that admits that I'm pretty cool. And this 'crazy hermit thingie' is pretty cool too."

"Yeah." Skye smiled down at her lap and picked up her orange again. Another peel spun into the creek.