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There’s just the problem of oxygen.
My legs work back and forth, pushing me higher and higher until a cool breeze tickles my cheeks and fresh air fills my lungs.
A dozen or so feet away, Rhenn surfaces as well. A little surprising, since I didn’t know he followed me. He scans the water, spotting me almost right away. “Do you have a death wish?” He looks irritated, but he almost always looks irritated.
“Oh, lighten up.” I roll my eyes. “You’re always such a hard ass. Learn to have some fun.”
“You call jumping off a cliff fun? What if there were rocks at the bottom? You didn’t know how deep it was.”
“You jumped too.”
“Trying to save you.”
“Did it ever occur to you I don’t want you to save me?”
“Are all humans so annoyingly ignorant?”
“Not as ignorant as vampires are boring.”
He treads the water, looking at me, then smacks his arm into the cool liquid. Ice rains over my head, and I laugh, splashing him back. The game only lasts for a minute before we call a truce. I move to float on my back, not missing the fact he’s still watching me. “Don’t stop looking in mirrors. What you don’t like, it’s only a reflection of what you feel inside, not what you really are. Those doubts, the anger, you can’t let it keep you a prisoner to yourself. Everything that’s happened…” he pauses for a long moment before finishing, “none of it was your fault.”
I turn to face him, not at all prepared for whatever version of Rhenn this is.
“Careful, your decency is showing,” I tease, not knowing how to respond to what he’s said. This is out of our normal, and it feels…weird. I wasn’t looking for his pity. I wasn’t sure he had any.
“Yeah, well, don’t tell anyone.” Rhenn gives me a soft smile, one I swear is trying to tell me something, I just don’t know what.
Shaking off whatever over ingestion of liquor, sentimental moment this is, I shift my focus back to the sky. “What happened to the troll?” I ask, removing myself from the topic.
“Troll?”
“The uptight head of blue that followed you around like a lost puppy.”
Rhenn chuckles, moving to float on his back as well. “Siena isn’t a troll. She’s a faerie.”
“Fine. What happened to the faerie?”
“I cut things off with her.”
“Why? She was a shrew, you’re a prick, it was a perfect match.”
“Besides the fact that we were never actually a thing, we had differing opinions.”
“On what?”
“That’s none of your business.”
I can’t argue with that. I’m also not sure I care. Rhenn and I aren’t friends. What he does with his life is his choice. It has no effect on me.
My eyes fall closed, soaking in the warmth of the sun over my cheeks. There’s a new peace inside me that wasn’t there earlier, like I’m finally starting to feel at ease with where I am in this world.
I feel her here. She’s in the wind, in the water. Her voice is playing through me, and without realizing it, I find myself quietly singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” It’s always been a song of comfort for me, even when I was young. Because I know somehow if I search hard enough, that’s where I’ll find her. That’s where my mom will be waiting for me.
Rhenn
Vix hums softly. There’s something so familiar in the melody, something I’d almost forgotten.
The cool breeze brushes against my face, carrying with it the scent of the trees. Water patters around us, lapping gently against the shore. For once, everything is calm. There is nothing that matters in this moment.
