Children of the Mirror

...23rd Part: Dark...

There were none of those alternate-life dreams that night, and it scared me a little. I'd been having them every night, and now that we were here, there were none. I did have other dreams, though. Normal ones – but they obviously weren't the same. A lot of those almost-ordinary dreams involved Krad.

During the next day, we resisted searching for the thing we were looking for, staying out of the buildings we walked by and just being together, because of the looming dread we felt. Neither of us wanted to admit it, but we were scared.

We walked side-by-side along the gravel roads, unable to reach out and touch each other, though every now and then we caught each other's glance. Our hands remained in our pockets mostly, but toward the end of the day, we got tired of the isolation and they hung at our sides, our fingers brushing against each other occasionally.

It was an odd turn of events, this sudden attachment to each other. Our argumentative adventure was trying to morph itself into an awkward romance – one, we were thinking, that would end badly.

"Dark," Krad whispered when the sun had gone away again, leaving us in darkness. "I don't think we can avoid it much longer. We have to find it."

"We don't have to find anything," I argued. "Maybe this town is the only thing we need." I gestured around with my arms. "Don't you think we could just give it up, now? I think I've found more than I can grasp," I added, finally slipping my fingers between his, holding his hand in mine.

I stared at the odd link for a while, and so did he. His arm tensed for a moment and I thought he was going to pull away – there was no doubting that he was contemplating it – but didn't.

"But..." his voice trailed off. I don't think he knew what to say.

"We don't need anything more, do we?" I ventured. "Can't we just be enough?"

It all seemed so horribly cliché...

Krad was shaking his head. He pressed his free hand over his stomach and looked back at me. "There's just... that feeling, Dark," he said. "We're missing something."

I laughed a little disdainfully. "Yeah – the only problem is, we still don't know what we're missing."

"I can't help that," he defended himself. "I don't have all the answers."

"Don't you?" I joked sarcastically. "I had no idea."

Krad didn't respond; just looked away.

Sighing, I turned his face toward me again. "Look," I said. "Tomorrow. Tomorrow we'll look, okay? We'll turn over every rock until we find the damn thing and then we'll leave it all behind us," I decided.

Krad nodded. "Okay."

Trying to smile reassuringly, I unlatched our hand and pulled him to me, wrapping my arms around his shoulders. He returned the embrace, hooking his arms under mine and laying his hands flat over my shoulder-blades, and he leaned the side of his face against my ear.

"I'm sorry, Dark," he said quietly.

"I'm not," I told him. "You shouldn't be, either. All those fights might've been worth something – who knows?"

Krad laughed slightly, and we held each other tighter. "Do you find this as weird as I do?" he wondered.

I could feel the sad moment drifting away, and I laughed again. "Yeah."

We pulled away from each other for the most part, but our hands had yet to part from his shoulders and my waist. Then Krad, smiling and laughing weakly, wiped something from his face.

"Are you crying? Krad – seriously?" his other hand retreated to his face and I shook his shoulders a little more violently than I had intended to.

"Of course I'm not," he denied. "Don't be ridiculous!"

"You are crying," I argued, the disbelief evident in my voice.

"No I'm not!" he insisted, wiping his eyes again and looking down at his hands. "It's just... dust..."

"Oh, come on – that's the oldest excuse there is!" I objected.

He sniffed at me, but his small laughter started again. "Well, I couldn't think of anything creative on such short notice."

I shook my head at him, smudging away another tear from his face. "What made you so pathetic?" I wondered.

He shoved at my chest. "I am not pathetic!" But he rethought his answer for a while. "I guess you did," he said. "I blame you – you and your stupid kissing habits."

Smirking, I kissed him right on cue, and ran. We chased each other all through the town, eventually tumbling to the ground in a wrestling match that was... well... fun.