It’s how people describe their lives replaying right before their eyes as they are welcomed by death—except I’m not dying.
I’m living.
I feel more alive, getting this connection to her, than I ever have before.
With that comes a wave of grief and protectiveness for her that’s so deep, it’s the closest I’ve felt to the ancient well of power all witches have but hardly use.
Except now, I could think of a few ways to use my air magic on her family—most specifically her mother.
It all hits me.
The nights we spent looking out at the lake when I could feel the faint whisper of her sadness, but it was so much more than that. It was true desolation and heartbreak. For so long, this beloved girl has been battling depression and isolation, and I wasn’t able to be there with her.
There are flashes of the nights when she sat—sometimes staring off into the distance over the lake, other times sobbing so loudly I can’t believe even a curse could have hidden that from me—trying to open up to me about her mother’s physical and emotional abuse. Her estranged older sister and the young ones who have always hated her. The pain oflosing her father. How empty and alone she felt for the majority of her life.
Then I get the memory that nearly kills me. The one from the first night we saw each other after a month of me avoiding her.
The visceral anger she felt toward me, but even then, I could pick up on the betrayal and loneliness that festered underneath. Her attempted attack was a way to protect herself from more hurt.
Eleven years worth of her emotions and memories barrel through me, I sit back and take in every one. There are some happy days mixed in—like the years before her father died when she was close with her sister, Agatha. Or the nights we’d find each other after she spent time in the city, and she came back with a variety of stories she talked about animatedly. There’s even one night—only one—that she mentions a human man she spent a night with during one of her adventures.
Dark envy hits my bloodstream like a shot of liquor. Her embarrassment and the way she awkwardly tried to backtrack, though I had no idea what she was talking about at the time, subdues most of that.
However, the bitterness of jealousy lingers at the confirmation that someone else has shared more than her company. It’d make me a hypocrite to be angry with her, but I hope she feels the same level of possessiveness toward me, especially after getting her fill of my memories and emotions.
She’s more mine than ever before, and all I can hope is she finally sees me as hers.
Once the memories wash through me, infiltrating my brain so deeply I can hardly separate what belongs to her and what is mine, I take a deep breath. It’s like being dropped into the middle of the ocean and swimming up for air, and you don’t realize how close you were to losing it all until you get that first, real inhale.
I hear the same, ragged sound pull out of Renata as she comes back into her consciousness. She’s staring at me, unsure how to make out everything happening between us. I wish I could remember everything I’ve said to her or what I’ve brought here from my real life.
I don’t think I was ever as raw or vulnerable in our dream state as she seemed to be. It brought me a lot of comfort, but also confusion. Some of that I might have mused on in her presence.
It was a complicated thing to be more emotionally invested in her than any of my relationships. There were nights when I wondered if this was fair to her—if it was a violation to disrupt her dreams multiple times a week.
The one memory I hope held as much weight for her as it did me was the one when we saw each other after weeks apart. I need her to realize how desperately I wanted to see her, and how the heartbreak and will to give her space nearly drove me out of my own skin.
After a long moment of staring at each other and regaining our bearings, her face cracks, and she silently cries into her hands.
“Renata, Little Wisp,” I murmur, crawling to her—not for the first time, and certainly not for the last. I’d pull myself across the world on my hands and knees if it meant getting to her again.
Now that I have seen her, I’d rather be blind if it means having to see the world without her.
She doesn’t pull away, instead surprising me by twisting back onto her knees and leaning toward me, reaching out as I pull her into my chest. Her arms stay wrapped around herself rather than me, but she curls up, trying to fit in my lap. She buries her face against my chest, letting me comfort her. I do my best to keep my racing heart calm, now understanding how skittish she is.
“Shh,” I reassure her. “We’re here now.”
She looks up at me and I gently cradle her cheek.
“You were always here,” she whispers. Reaching up, she wipes below my eye, a tear I didn’t notice was there. “Most of the time, I thought this—” she waves her hand in the air, “—was an inconvenience to you.”
Shaking my head, I pull her closer and drop my forehead to hers. “No. Never.”
“You left… Forweeks,” she argues, but the fight has faded. At least for now.
“I thought I was doing the right thing at the time,” I insist.
She lets out a sigh and mutters, “You weren’t.”
