(FREE TO READ) Bad Moon

chapter 35 ; Ziya

Whoever she was, she was amazing.

She smelled bitter, like nectar. Floral like boronia and jasmine. Her hair washed over her shoulders like satin, the color so inorganic, so unusually pale, she looked like a living fairy tail for each evanescent moment it billowed in the late September breeze. He wanted everything to do with her. Everything she was, he wanted it.

She didn't walk; the air carried her. She floated to him like an angel. She looked like one too, the way she wore white lace and silver jewelry that glinted and glared like starlight in her neck's hollow—flashed like treasure through all the negative space of her web-white hair. That hair, angelic enough on its own—down now, free from its braid and billowing, opalescent in the sunlight. But she was too young to be an angel, too youthful, too alive.

Jaylin wrinkled his nose at the smell in the air. It stung his sinuses like a chemical—something he'd smelled before but never so strongly. He'd slept on the drive, wherever they'd gone. A man had pricked his arm with a needle and he was asleep in seconds. It was mid-day now, and they'd been let out of the car at the edge of the clearing. Two men joined them, the other driving off with the van they'd arrived in.

It wasn't until they were outside that Jaylin noticed his hands—no longer swollen and black, but back to the pale fleshy color they'd always been. His legs too, no longer felt so heavy. No longer hurt to walk on.

"It's just a little mistletoe," she'd told him. "Just a tiny bit to help you get around."

It was mid-day now and the woman had taken him by the hand and led him from the field, down a trail between trees—a trail treaded so often the ground had been thinned and the shrubbery trimmed and groomed to keep passer-bys from being scratched by the foliage.

He saw a building in the distance, built in the center of military-grade fencing. It felt like a government operation, especially when the woman with pearl hair and russet skin tapped a key-card against a scanning device to pass through the electric gate.

"What is this place?" Jaylin asked, a chilly prickle on his neck. The building was large and uniform with wide open windows for walls, and person after person passing by in black uniforms. Each wore a pin on their lapel—the symbol of a glaring sun.

"It was a hospital," the girl said. "Now we use it for research."

"It stinks."

The girl laughed, her voice honey. The more Jaylin heard it, the less it echoed in his head. But it was still brilliant, still lovely. He loved the sound of it. He loved everything about her and he didn't much understand why.

"It's a calming agent. We run it through the ventilation system to keep our guests behaved. You'll get used to it, I promise."

"Guests?"

The woman smiled. She let his hand slip from her own, walked on ahead. Jaylin felt the urge to take it back, so he followed closely at her side.

They didn't enter any of the glass buildings that Jaylin thought they might. Instead they passed by the facilities, through another electronic gate with pass-card access. This fence existed within the first and wrapped itself around the vast green fields of a plantation house. It looked old, but built to last and structurally maintained. Even the front steps had been replaced within the last decade.

"How about we talk over fresh bread and roasted chicken?" she asked, stepping forward onto the veranda. "Maybe a little wine if you'd like. I want to know more about you, Jaylin. I'm so glad I've finally found you."

She didn't wait for him to find his words. He wouldn't know what to say if she had. Found me? was all he could think. Have I been missing? But where she went, he wanted to go. Where she looked, he wanted to be. He couldn't understand what he was feeling for this woman—this stranger. He'd narrowed it down to an obsession. One that baffled him, one he couldn't explain. He thought maybe he might love her. But that made even less sense.