Love and Other Magical Adventures

eighteen

Of course I dreamed of Zynayda.

In the dream we're high on the cliff as we were that last day, as we always are in my various strange and terrible versions of the real-life nightmare. I've just offered her the last apple. She's weaving a crown from the tiny white flowers peppering the grass around us.

I'm wishing I was bold enough to hold her hand.

Do it, Grim dares me from his perch in the tree with Cheyenne.

I could ruin everything, I protest. I'd rather have this than nothing.

He shakes his head, swinging his dangling leg back and forth. He's heard it too many times.

"Share with the group," Chey reminds us, because those of us with telepathic bonds try to speak aloud when we're all together. Her bonded dragon Raxis is usually with us but has his private training lesson; the rest of us spent the morning practicing our magic until we had none left, and happily were given the afternoon off.

"It's nothing," he says airily, as he is the only one who knows how I feel about Zyndaya. He pulls hard candies from his pocket, offering them as a distraction, and it works.

Zyn has her knife out and is cutting the apple in half, decoring it and returning half to me with a smile that I swear is laden with more than our usual exchanges.

"If you do it, and somehow hate it, I will do your chores for a week," I tempt her about cliff diving.

"Lorali, you are being such a pain in the ass," Cheyenne groans.

I just want her to experience the rush of it, to love it as I do, but Chey is right. "Sorry, I'm done," I say sheepishly. "For today."

"It's not that I'm afraid of landing; I'm afraid of falling," Zyndaya quips, as she usually says the opposite.

"I see what you did there," I say, and the corner of her mouth lifts. The wind picks up then, just as I notice how close she is to the edge all of a sudden, and I reach to take her hand after all.

It slips through mine as another gust sweeps her over the side as we all watch helplessly, frozen in place, a scream building up inside me--

LORALI! Grimmer's mental voice was loud in my head, making me startle into consciousness. Sorry, I've been trying to wake you. You're dreaming. He tried not to sound pained; he liked to relive that day about as much as I did. That was a new ending. Good times in your subconscious, huh?

My heart and body and mind ached so. Being a person was just hard.

You want to talk about it?

I was already slipping back under. No.

Of course you don't. He sighed. Go back to sleep. Try to keep it down with the nightmares. Some day you're going to have to talk about it.

Not if I could help it. It's not like it would change anything.

Other than a half-asleep trip into the bushes at dawn, I slept until dusk the next day. I woke up starving, dehydrated, and groggy, but I just lay there and listened to Grim talking with Sylvie. He was in human form, and the two of them were barely visible next to the fire as the sun bled from our sky.

Her raspy voice reached my ears. "She has such strong magic."

Not strong enough though.

"She does," he said simply, because it was true, though it had cost us. The jealousy and envy of others had alienated us a lot, even with me hiding and downplaying as much of it as I could.