Winter's Kiss (Summer Rain #2)

XXXI ~ The Chill

{Smoke Signals ~ Phoebe Bridgers}

...I buried a hatchet, it's coming up lavender, the future's unwritten, the past is a corridor, I'm at the exit looking back through the hall, you are anonymous, I am a concrete wall...

-----

10th December 

AVA

     The snow was thick outside my windowpane, piling heavy against the glass. Even in the dead of winter, the city bustled through the wind and frozen chill of December. I felt it in my bones, a chilling memory lost behind glassy ice, something frozen inside of me that I wanted to thaw, to chip away into the heart of, to release from within.

     Every day since I woke up I had watched each snowflake fall from the sky, through the grey-white sky of the morning to the inky black of night. In my sleep, I would feel my fingers outstretch, pressing into my mattress, wishing instead to feel the silky touch of a piano, the sound echoing out of me into its keys. Every day I listened to music, hearing each note so crisply in my ears. Even on days when my body ached, and my mind took me down roads with dead ends and no satisfying conclusions to half-remembered stories, I felt the calling to a life I only half-remembered. And there were feelings with no name, and names with nothing but questions left hanging like a thread. 

But even in the darkest Winter, there would be the hope of the thaw, for even in the blackest night, the sun promises to return. 

----

"Do you want eggs?" Bodhi called through to me from the kitchen. 

I was still in bed, half-sat up and scrolling through my computer. School emails flooded my sight, as I worked through each one. It seemed like even in a coma, the school still expected my full attention. 

"I'm good," I called back, "I could take some coffee, though."    

"You got it," he hollered. 

I soon heard the kettle boiling, while Bodhi pottered around in the kitchen, whistling a bouncy little tune. There was the sound of a sizzling frying pan and the creak on the floorboards to echo through the walls. 

"Did Killian not tell the school about the accident?" I asked, hearing Bodhi make his way down the hallway to my room at a quickening pace. 

"I think so, you'd have to ask him," Bodhi responded, handing me a steaming mug of coffee. "Why?" 

I turned my laptop towards him, his eyes widening in shock. The endless unopened, unanswered messages left us like adventurers staring up at an endless mountain. 

"I missed a lot," I sighed. 

"Maybe he did and it's just email admin things," Bodhi reassured me, sitting at the edge of my bed. 

"Maybe," I nodded. "I guess I'll find out." 

 "Are you still sure you're ready to go back?" 

"What else am I meant to do, Bo? Languish about in this bed till I remember everything? If it ever happens?"

"You know what I mean," he smirked. "As much as I do love to languish in bed myself, I just don't want to see you push yourself too hard."