Escape (Ezria)

20. Epilogue: the sky.

She'd always liked the sky.

She remembered sunny days with her mother, apple picking at the old Campbell farm with the other children of the town, exchanging as it pleased them. They were adaptable and fluid and all together on their own. The sky was free.

She remembered saving up, buying her first notebook that would become her diary. She always liked the stars, the giant balls of light, powerful, beautiful, dangerous. Yet visible only as small little dots of light in the overwhelming dark. She wanted to sort them and code them and listen to their secrets. She wanted to write these secrets down in her diary, like the stars would only confide in her. The stars consumed her mind and she was left confused and sad, and still in awe of this eternal beauty so far away.

She remembered being locked away in a classroom, a film background noise to the thunderstorm awakening the author within her. Huddled up with a group of friends in the cold, all talking in hushed voices about how the storm seemed to speak to them, to release something inside of them, and how they couldn't understand the fear the girls on the other table seemed to feel towards this magic.

She remembered sitting on a trampoline at 12am among friends, the scent of tea tree enveloping her, and wishing on the first star she saw. While they were discussing secrets and gossip she was wishing for another universe, a planet to call her own. She remembered saying her pleases and thank yous because maybe if she asked politely enough, her wishes would come true. She saw three shooting stars that night.

She remembered walking to school on a frosty morning and looking up at the seemingly infinite blue and wishing she could keep it forever. So she pulled out her phone and took a picture. And as she felt the frost crisp and cold beneath her shoes she wished it would snow. She wished the cold white would bury her and hide her away, like a snow angel fallen from heaven, living the hell that was earth.

When she looked back on the photo the next day, it just wasn't the same.

She remembered seeing a rainbow on the bus and pointing it out to her friend with a grin, who just sniggered uninterestedly, because no one else seemed to love the sky like she did, not even the rainbows themselves, not the clouds could live up to her love for what rose above her.

She'd always liked the sky.

So was it any surprise that she fell for someone with storms in their eyes, with constellations hidden on their cheeks? All the stars and storms that caught her then, caught her again now and she found herself getting lost in all of the clouds she hadn't seen sneaking up behind her. And even though she couldn't breathe in these high heights the air was so sweet that she'd rather die breathing it than live without it once more. But in all of her fascination she forgot how unpredictable a storm truly can be, and that a rainbow can't fix what a tornado broke. Or that sometimes the rainbow doesn't happen, and you're just left with the wreckage of your mind wondering how you could've guessed it wrong.

She'd always liked the sky, she fell in love with it. And in the end, it was the sky that killed her.