I ignore the pleading in the distance, focusing on the dancing mist that calls to my heart like a beacon of light. If I just focus on it, on the twin piece within me, everything will be fine. We’ll be together, even if it’s here.
Bel?Someone says in my mind.Bel, it’s Eamon. Where are you?
Vankhala, I tell him.Fritz is here.
You need to come back. You don’t belong there.
I belong wherever he is.
Bel, you are dying.
You don’t understand,I tell him.I can get him back.Ihave to get him back.
The more desperate I feel, the more I beg and plead my soul to reach him, the closer he appears.
A soft brush strokes my cheek before falling right through me.Fritz!I try to pull him against me, getting the lightest touch, then losing him.
Again, I plead at the light within me to pull him in, bring him back with me.
Please,I beg the mist before me that is Fritz’s soul; Ineed you. You need to come home. Remember home? With me and Caspian?
Home…a disembodied voice floats to me,Bel.
Yes! Yes, it’s Bel. We need to go home, Fritz.
It’s so lovely here, my Bel. So quiet. Can’t I stay? There’s no pain here. No wickedness. Just silence. Can’t you feel it?
No, you can’t stay here,I plead.
But nothing hurts here. That world is so full of pain. Why can’t I stay?
If in this strange world, I could cry, I know I would be.Because I need you. And if I stay here with you, I will die.
Die?For the first time, his voice sounds pained.You can’t die. You need to go. Leave me here.
No, Fritz, please! Don’t you remember? It’s you and me! Forever. What this world and all the worlds before and after are made for, right?
Bel!Eamon shouts in my head again.You’re seizing. You have to stop!
Fuck off!I yell at him, and the disembodied voice within my soul and heart starts to laugh. A warm, loving laugh that makes my heartbeat jump even from the next world.
Fritz?I ask, hoping perhaps he’s more himself than he was a moment ago.
My Songbird, you are as full of fire as ever; even in this lifeless void, you radiate light and magic.
He almost seems corporeal now. The glitter forming into a vaguely Fritz-like shape, his strange and beautiful antlers the most comforting thing I’ve ever seen. Finally, he’s reaching for me again. When his hand finds mine, the fingers interlace fully, and he tells me,Let’s go home. I’m sure we’ve scared Caspian enough for one day.Then he tugs me closer, and a blinding white light hits me.
I gasp and sit up, my heart pounding in my chest as my light settles back into it. Around me, the ground shakes, but I can’t look away from the terrified white eyes staring into mine.
“Belissenda, you scared the shit out of me,” Caspian confesses, his voice cracking as he crushes me against his chest, not caring for the black blood he’s covering me in.
“Where’s Fritz?” my voice wobbles, wondering if it was all just a hallucination concocted by my grief-stricken mind.
“Right here,” a grumble sounds from the floor next to me. I almost can’t believe it. “That fuckingsucked.”
He clamors upright, and with no care for how gentle we need to be, Caspian and I both clutch him against us, the three of us finally reunited without anyonecurrentlytrying to tear us apart.
“What the hell just happened?” I pant.
