Don't Fear The Reaper

{iv. hide your face so the world will never find you}

❝If there's one thing I've learned over the eons, it's that you can't give up on your family, no matter how tempting they make it.❞

-Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan

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Paris. I'm in Paris.

The City of Love and Light itself is spread out below me, but it's not how I've always seen in pictures. There's no modern buildings or cars, artificial light is nowhere to be seen, and the Eiffel Tower does not stand tall above the Champs de Mars. If I thought I heard wrong, the sound of horse-drawn carriages is confirmed by the sight of them traversing the narrow streets in my view.

Snow is falling gently around me; I look down and see I'm wearing a white cloak, lined with gold, over top of an extravagant ball gown the color of champagne and sunshine. I can feel something on my face, and when I reach up to touch it, I find a metallic mask surrounding my eyes.

Things seem to be moving in slow motion. I turn and see Kat standing a few feet away from me. We're on a rooftop, that much I can tell, and my sister is dressed similar to me. Her gown is a deep teal, bringing out the cool tones in her skin, and her hair is cascading down her neck and across her shoulders in a waterfall of ringlets held up by a crystallized hair piece.

Her mask, lacy and detailed with emerald and aquamarine, does nothing to hide the absolute shock that paints her eyes.

She turns towards me and says, "Oh my god, Lila. Where... are we?"

"The roof of the Opéra de Paris, 1881. New Year's Eve."

It's not my voice that answers - it's Mor's. He was perching on a statue of a pegasus on a ledge nearby, but now he jumps down and glides towards us. His outfit hasn't changed, but somehow he still fits in among the gold gilded bars and oxidized domes that dot the landscape of the roof.

"You took us back in time?" I ask, and then think: and not just any time, either. It's the night of the masquerade in Phantom of the Opera, and though I know it's fictional, I can't help but feel like I've jumped into the pages of the libretto.

"Indeed I did," Mor answered. Like we're connected, which I suppose we are in some twisted way, we both turn and look at Kat expectantly.

She's no-longer horrified, like she was in the car. Instead, she's just flustered and disbelieving.

"That's not... that's not possible." Kat shakes her head, her curls bouncing. "This isn't Doctor Who, you can't just take us back in time, or to Paris... this must be a dream, oh God."

That last part isn't really a sentence, but more of a ramble, slowly getting softer as she looks down at the ground. Maybe a moment or so passes before my sister looks up at me like an injured puppy, a pout I haven't seen since we were kids.

I don't know what to say. I can't truly gauge her emotions, but her wide eyes and lowered eyebrows and slack jaw show the betrayal she's feeling. Not by me, but by what she was always told.

"Even if it were a dream, young Miss Cabrera," Mor says, wandering away from us towards a staircase I hadn't noticed before. "What would be the harm of taking advantage of it?" He looks her straight in the eyes, then hops down the stairs with that strange zeal of his, his voice trailing behind him: "The ball is this way!"

We watch him disappear from sight, and I think about how, only about a week ago, the reaper had terrified me out of my wits. He still unnerves me, yes, but something in me wants to follow him down those stairs.