I'll Share With You My Heartbeat

twenty nine

Have fun figuring it all out on your own, Kieran.

They grimaced, hard. The joints of their fingers hurt with all their jittery movements. The tiniest flicker of regret in their stomach that was slain in the bitter wind.

Autumn remembered when they had to figure it out on their own.

That earth-shattering moment in the evening of June 2018, when Autumn looked down and found their hands transparent. Looked back up and found a corpse that looked too much like their own lying a few feet away.

The smell of burnt tires and gasoline. The piercing hue of blood and the truck on its side.

Autumn had screamed then, knees giving out on the highway. No one heard them.

Sometimes they wished it wasn't so vivid in their mind. But sitting in this fog reminded Autumn of the day their old orphanage planted their grave, marked with no birthdate since that remained a mystery.

Autumn had yet to shed a tear until they watched their old caretaker kiss the headstone, her lipstick washed away in the rain. That was the first time they cried since their death.

The second time was after leaving Kieran.

Here they stood, on top of a stonewall at the edge of the graveyard, as if looking over their kingdom. An unsettling feeling clawed at Autumn's collarbones and up their throat.

Suddenly, a slender creature came through the gate, followed by a tall figure. The fog made them look like clots of dark grey.

Autumn swear they felt their pulse quicken when they realized the pair was heading towards their grave. With one swift motion, they jumped off the stonewall.

They froze as soon as they were close enough to identify the figure. As if on instinct, Autumn decided to play the intimidating card.

"What are you doing here, Kieran?"

"Autumn?" the ravenhead found himself on his knees, staring up at them with shock invading his facial features.

Autumn's hair looked rather frizzy in this damp weather. "How did you find this place?" they asked firmly, a heavy accessorized hand curled into their cape.

Kieran had always idolized that cape. Waking up into a world where you barely knew a thing— just a name you called yourself and a land unrecognizable, Autumn was his first answer— his first savior, first friend.

But here stationed above their grave, Kieran finally realized the pedestal he had placed Autumn on.

"Lennon's cat helped me," Kieran whispered, as if afraid to speak in their presence. The feline was scratching its body against a nearby gravestone. "That's Socks."

Autumn raised their chin and looked beyond the ravenhead. "A black cat." Their eyes clouded with understanding. "Masters of superstition. It must've connected you with the boy."

"I wanted to talk to you." Kieran got off the soil anxiously, pants stained a deep earthy brown. He breathed deeply. "You were right."

Autumn gazed at him with half-lidded eyes, eyebrow raising. Disconnected. "About what?" they prodded, suppressing the urge to smack Kieran and call him stupid before suffocating him in one of their awkward hugs.

The ravenhead braced himself for the impact of his own words, shoulders tensing. "You were right that I was safeguarding my feelings for him." But his nervous demeanor vanished when he forced his head up to meet his friend's eyes, an undeniable fury behind his next sentence. "But my feelings for him are very real."