Starfall

Chapter 8 - Ben

The story I tell her is true. Well, mostly true. I just flip the perspective a bit. I wasn't the kid. I was the guy doing the stabbing. It was the first time Rose sent me on an assassination mission. It was terrible. And the task of taking another's life like that didn't get any easier the next three times I had to do it.

Yes, I tell Elyse a mostly-true story. And then she presents to me the exact thing I need from her.

The Isthmus of the Sky.

After the words hit the air in the shape of her voice, she gives me a funny look. It takes me a minute to recognize the fact that my mouth is hanging wide open in pure, unbridled shock.

I have to clean up my act here.

"You alright?" she says carefully, narrowing her eyes with a frown.

I blink several times and shake the shock out of me. "Y-yeah. Yeah, it's just . . . I haven't heard that name since I was, like, five years old." I shake my head in actual disbelief. "The Isthmus. . . . I've only ever heard stories. Just myths."

She nods. When I look up at her in the next moment, I see that her gaze has sunken into itself. She's deep in thought, in feelings. Lost in some kind of dream she can't seem to reach.

"Why do you ask?" I say quietly, leaning over to catch her attention.

She blinks. Turns to me. There's a hesitation in her voice when she tells me, "That's where I'm going, Ben. That's where I've always been going."

Her stare bores into me, but it's vacant of her soul. When I look back into those bright eyes of hers, I don't see her inside. She's not in her body at the moment—she's far away, in a place she's never been; a place she's always wanted to be.

At least, that's what it looks like.

"The Isthmus is real?" I ask tenderly, making sure to tread carefully on these waters.

She reappears within her gaze, suddenly snapped back into her body. A small smile forms on her soft expression. "Of course it is."

This is odd. Moments ago, she interacted with me as a stranger. Because that's what we are. Strangers. She spoke to me as if I were something to be investigated, walked beside me as if we had never once met.

But now, she seems to have lost her protective shield, and she can't seem to rediscover it. She looks at the world with a softer view, looks at me with a kind of vulnerability. And all because of her own mention of the Isthmus of the Sky.

I watch as she twists within her own binds, her own limitations of rules and boundaries. Right in front of me, she transforms from Thoughtful Elyse back into Stranger Elyse, and that constant look of submerged pain carves its way through her expression once again. She's lived a life worth telling stories of, but for some reason, she doesn't tell them. Which makes her stories all the more intriguing.

Her eyes have dimmed, and her stare breaks. She looks to something behind me and points to it. But I can't move; I can't possibly turn around when I've just watched Elyse turn into someone she's not used to being—someone she doesn't let herself be.

She leans around me and grabs whatever it was she pointed at. It's a block of cheese wrapped in protective paper. As she sets it in our shopping bin, she says, "Unless you become someone I can't stand, you're coming with us to the Isthmus. And if you have a problem with that, then we can throw you overboard just before we get there, and you'll be stranded on the cusp of the Earth and the endless abyss of outer space."

"O-oh," I gasp, unsure of what it is that just came out of her mouth. Where did Nice, Thoughtful Elyse go? I think I want her back. I only met her for about ten seconds, and I already miss her. "Wait, are you saying you can stand me right now?"