Bluebirds Without Wings | Julie and the Phantoms

Linger

Luke let himself sleep for a while as they drove to their safe house, but he woke up after they accidentally hit a bump. It was dark outside, and his phone said it was one in the morning. He looked around and it was nothing but fields, shadows of trees letting themselves been seen every mile or so.

The Princess and him had no idea where it was, but he guessed it was somewhere on edge's of the kingdom's map, far off from the war. The military planned to push it more into the Kingdom of Malachite rather than on their land, but either way, it was going to be tragedy with corpses sprawled on each side of the fire.

He wondered how many familiar faces would be among the dead. He had been carrying guilt for years now and this war was going to push him over the edge. It was always going to happen as much as he had stayed hopeful, almost delusional, that the King would change his mind. Luke looked over at the sleeping Princess. It shouldn't had gotten that far.

Benny slowed the car down into a park and Luke looked outside, the front lights of the car shone upon a small country home with no neighbors. The porch light was on, and he could see bugs flying around it through the tinted windows. "We're here," Benny told them. Luke reached over and put his hand on Princess Julie's shoulder, waking her up. Julie turned to look at him, her eyes fluttering open. She stared at him as Benny spoke. "There's two rooms here. I'm crashing on the couch and leaving before the sun rises and hope nobody followed us here. You two will be here until someone sends for you. It could be a while."

-

Luke didn't sleep anymore after. He heard Benny make a coffee in the morning before leaving, rustling around for ingredients and boiling water in a teapot. The walls in the farmhouse were very thin, the wallpaper on it fading and peeling off in certain places. The bed in the room he was in was comfortable and there was a homemade quilt covering it, each patch a different town of the kingdom. He instinctively looked for Silvone, the symbol above the letters a bougainvillea flower bush. He grazed his fingers on it, feeling so fake.

He looked through the drawers in the room, only finding a tiny wooden horse in one of them. There was no closet. There was a tall oval mirror that had been cleaned recently with a crack in the corner and the window had lace for curtains. The wooden floorboards were creaky in certain places, but they had been recently swept. Someone did a deep clean of the house before they got there, but it still felt so deserted. Nobody would ever guess a Princess was staying in a house like that.

He walked out and went through the kitchen cabinets. They were stocked to the brim and so was the fridge. They somehow got them an old house with electricity. They'd need their phones for updates, but his had stayed at two bars, occasionally one or none depending on where he was standing. They were stranded together.

There was no dining room, just a small table with mismatched chairs in between the kitchen area and the living room that had a couch, a bookshelf, and a radio on a table propped up by books. The hall was small, his and the Princess' rooms across from each other with a smaller bathroom in between. He had grown up in an apartment as small as this home, and it was nostalgic to see cracks in everything.

Luke poured himself some coffee left on the stove and picked out a book to read. It didn't have a book cover and was maybe titled "Music: How Independence Saved It." It took him a while to fully get into, but he managed to read three chapters by the time Princess Julie walked out of her room. She went into the restroom first before going out to sit across from him at the kitchen table. He looked between his book and her, and he took sips out of his empty coffee cup. She stared down at the table, looking exhausted.

"You hungry?" he asked her. She shook her head no but Luke could not remember the last time they ate. "I'm going to cook some breakfast right now. If I make extra will you eat it?" She shrugged, but he took it as a yes. He closed the book and got to work.