Cynthia Hand - Unearthly

I go to the sink for a glass of water, then drink it slowly. I smell smoke, the scent of the fire still lingering in the air. This makes me think of Christian. Three miles due east, he said, as the crow flies. Three miles isn’t so far. I imagine myself slipping across the earth, like I’m travelling along the roots of the trees and grass, stretching a line between me and Christian’s house like a piece of string between two tin cans, my own makeshift telephone.

I want to feel what he feels.

And then I do. I find him. Somehow I know it’s him and not anyone else. He’s not asleep. He’s thinking of me, too. He’s thinking about the moment when he wiped the smudge of ash from my cheek, the way my skin felt under his fingers, the way I looked at him. He’s confused, churning, frustrated. He doesn’t know what’s expected of him anymore.

I get that. We didn’t ask for any of this; we were born into it. And yet we’re supposed to serve blindly, to follow rules we don’t understand, to let some larger force map out our lives and tell us who we should love and what, if anything, we should dare to dream.

In the end, when Christian and I flew away together, there were no flames below us.

There was no fire chasing us. We weren’t saving each other. We weren’t in love with each other. Instead, we were changed. We were thrown for a cosmic loop. I don’t know if I’ve fallen from grace, or if I’m on some sort of heavenly plan B. Maybe it doesn’t matter.

One thing I do know is that we can never go back.