Missing

Is It Okay To Cry

Reynas  POV

Sprinting out of the tunnel I felt the overhead ceiling quiver and collapse seconds after I'd scrambled out. Hylla tugged me to my feet the instant I stumbled out. She half dragged half carried me away from the building.

I wasn't aware of my shaking body, or shock stained look, and certainly not the pain I'd bear later on. The world seemed to have slowed down to a fraction of normal speed. While I was moving, it felt like I was trying to find my way through quicksand and syrup.

The sky in front of me darkened, the air became heavy with iron and electricity danced through the openness. I knew what was going to happened before it did. Lightning and thunder split the air crushing the wood shack into a pile of splinters but it went deeper than that. The wood ignited in flames, and the ground beneath my feet trembled as large sink holes spread out on all sides. What was below us was imploding.

Snapping back into focus everything rushed back at once. I slipped out of Hylla's grip and started to run as the earth opened up eager to swallow everyone whole. Louise who'd been injured was being piggy backed by Maya. The others scrambled about slipping and sliding seconds away from being sucked in.

We managed to make it to the edge of the sinkhole exhausted and out of breathe. Hylla rested her hands on her knees panting.

"Fuck," She cursed. I didn't bother responding, instead turning back to the chaos. The field was now nothing more than what you could imagine if a drill had dug through the ground in random places. Large holes covered the surface with craters the sizes of a house. The earth was now like the surface of the moon.

Dark storm clouds roiled overhead and they thickened until a heavy rain unleashed. The drips were thick and heavy, sad almost. Sitting on the soggy ground I watched and waited. Waited and waited and waited for her tall slender figure to miraculously appear. For bright blue eyes to hold a small sense of humor as she walked over. For me to be angry while she laughed and said 'I got you. You should've seen the look on your face.' For me to laugh about it later and to think it was a clever joke.

Nothing of the sort happened. It took me a moment to realize that my eyes were stinging not from the rain that drizzled carelessly down my face but from tears. I couldn't explain the feeling exactly. The loss. I'd thought I'd experienced it before but this was different. I'd lost a friend beyond any one I'd ever had. There was no way she'd come back from that and I knew it despite my false hope.

"Reyna." It was Hylla. "Reyna, we have to go."

I gave no reply. Part of me was content with sitting there, not moving, hoping and wishing for something impossible. Hylla's arms wrapped around me and she dragged me to my feet but I went slack slipping back out of her grip. I wasn't going to move, not until-

"Reyna enough," Hylla frowned, her tone sharp. "We have wounded. There's nothing left here."

"We can't leave." My voice was shaky and I hated it.

"We have to." Hylla spoke firmly very different from her sisterly way of speaking.

"What about the-" my voice dropped to hardly above a whisper, "the after life they won't be able to- she won't be able to..."

"We can come back but we need to go back to camp." Hylla offered me her hand and I reluctantly took it. With a firm tug I was pulled to my feet. My legs felt like lead and I didn't feel like moving. "Tell them what happened."