When she takes it, I swear I can feel our connectionsing.
The contact is brief but life-changing. For just a moment, all is right with the world. The soft press of her fingers against my own keeps me grounded, an anchor to thoughts adrift. Each and every one of my insecurities and doubts evaporates into oblivion the moment I take her hand in my own. My breath catches in my throat, a giddy lightness rising in me with such force I feel as though I’m floating.
Best of all, I know she feels it, too.
It’s in her soft inhale, her full lips parted just so. It’s in the wayher eyes find mine with ease. It’s in the way time stops, granting us a fraction of infinity to justbe. This peace that washes over me is unlike anything I have felt before. My soul is calm, my place in the world suddenly as clear as the sky above.
Then she pulls away, and again I’m lost.
“We should…” Jyn clears her throat. “We should get in.”
“Right, of course,” I say quickly.
I shrug off my tunic and place it over the top of the trench, placing generous amounts of sand around the edges to create a weighted anchor. Pulled taut, the fabric provides just enough shade and protection for the both of us. A makeshift canopy. The shade it provides only covers three-quarters of the trench, leaving a wide enough space near the end for us to crawl underneath. The air is stuffy and the space is cramped, but the relief of finally getting out of the sun is immediate.
Jyn and I lie there together, barely an inch apart in our shelter, the warmth of the air amplifying my exhaustion. Only my toes stick out from beneath the shade, but I grin and bear it. It’s better than nothing.
“Where did you learn to build things like this?” she whispers.
I bury the tips of my fingers into the sand beneath me, feeling the coarse grains rub against my skin. “I’m not sure,” I admit. “Instinct, I suppose?” I stare up at the underside of my tunic-turned-canopy as memories surface. “I recall one particularly terrible summer, when it was so hot you couldn’t step foot outside without sweltering. The only way to escape the heat was to remain indoors. When I was a boy, I would venture out to a stone well I had found atop a mountain. I would climb down and sleep away the days at the bottom where it was coolest…”
I trail off, confused.
What am I saying?Whyam I saying this? There was never any well, and summers in the North were always mild at best.
And yet I can so clearly see the soft green moss against the cool gray stones, smell the damp earth beneath my feet. I feel the cool shade against my body, the stretch of my muscles as I curl up for a much-needed noonday nap before a little girl’s voice reaches my ears.
… Whatwasthat just now? These visions are not only growing more frequent, but much clearer the longer I find myself in Jyn’s presence. She has awakened something inside me, something I can’t attempt to name.
Colors, sensations, smells—all vibrant and real. Could it be that I’m dehydrated? Highly likely. Victim to sun poisoning? Even more so. But if that’s the case, why do these visions resonate so deeply within me? I don’t understand how it’s possible: they are my memories, and yet they are not—echoes of a life that may or may not be mine. Maybe they belong to Jyn, and I’m somehow privy to these brief flashes of a time long gone by.
Beside me, Jyn lies motionless, eyes closed, her chest slowly rising and falling. How she’s managed to fall asleep so quickly, I will never know. I take a moment to admire the graceful curl of her long lashes and the serious press of her lips. She is just so…close. So close that I can’t believe any of this is real.
I rub my little finger. Perhaps my hypothesis is correct. These visions I’ve been having must be the result of our thread of fate. If I can sense her emotions, is it not possible that I could sense her memories, as well?
I roll onto my side and hazard a direct look at the woman lying next to me. Words cannot do her beauty justice. There’s an otherworldly quality to her, something that balances on the cusp of the ethereal. She lies so still that one could mistake her for carved marble, her pale skin smooth and soft. Her long dark hair flows over her shoulders in rivulets, pooling about her head like a shadowyhalo. I can’t fathom the seven thousand years she has claimed to live, for she looks not a day older than I.
She stirs, her eyes fluttering open. When our eyes connect, however brief the moment might be, I swear I can see it—the lifetimes upon lifetimes of wisdom, of wandering…
Andpain.
Cold and insidious, it seems to seep out of her, overwhelming our bond to the point that I’m surprised it has not yet cracked through her fine marble skin. All that grief in a simple glance. In that moment, I feel it seep into my marrow. And while I’m fervid to know everything about her, now I’m also afraid.
What horrors has Jyn seen to look so haunted?
How much of it has she had to endure all alone?
Just as sleep tugs at my mind, I happen to peer down at our fraying thread. My eyes widen, a gasp rushing out of me. The center point of our thread of fate… isglowing.
It’s the faintest hint of red. A persimmon, not quite ripe. Like the morning sun peeking out over the horizon. There’s still slack between us, but nowhere near as much as before. Where our thread once looked moments away from snapping, now it slowly knits itself together. It happens at a snail’s pace, one barely perceptible fraction at a time, but I know what I’m seeing is real. Our thread of fate is repairing itself, starting from the center and working its way out, winding carefully.
“Jyn,” I rasp. “Jyn, our thread is…”
I glance at her, suddenly realizing that she’s watching, too. But where I’m vibrating with excitement, her brow creases in a steep frown. Her jaw is tight, her lips a hard line. Whatever joy I felt drains when she turns away, rolling onto her shoulder to expose her back to me.
In an instant, what little progress our thread has made comesto a halt. The red bloom shrinks back to the center, its warmth dwindling like the final embers of a hearth, before it fades back to its usual gloomy gray. I can sense a divide between us, an intentional wall that stops me from sensing her thoughts. My Fated One is pushing me away.
And I want to know why. Ineedto.
