Bedtime Stories

The Lake

"Do it, Echo," Bellamy's voice resounded in Echo's ears, and even though she had not heard the voice that had brought her so much serenity in so long, the timbre of his voice felt more chilling than the snow beneath her back.

The air was thin and Echo's heartbeat pounded heavily in her chest as her best friend stood above her, ready to stab her in the heart. She looked into her eyes... so fragile.

"I'm sorry," The girl said and raised the knife in the air, Echo's heartbeat pounding in her ears as her eyes watered.

"I'm sorry, too," she said, and she reached for the arrow that had been long forgotten on the ground.

Before she knew it, she had plunged the arrowhead into the younger girl's chest, and she felt the flesh tear.

Her dry mouth let out a broken gasp, and the tightness in her chest made it hard for her to breathe in, but the exact moment she froze was when someone else's voice came out of her best friend's mouth.

"Echo?"

It was not Hope's undoubtable voice that quenched Echo's heart dry. It was seeing her best friend's face morphing into Hope's delicate features as Hope gasped for air and blood gushed out of her mouth.

"What did you do?"

Warm tears fell over Echo's face before she fell back into the darkness of the cabin.

As soon as Echo opened her eyes, she realized just how much things had changed in just a matter of a few weeks.

Bellamy was not her main concern at the moment. Especially not when her heart pounded in her ears because she had just seen a blood-choking Hope die right in front of her, and it had been her fault.

The spy had not had a single pleasant dream in decades, but she always knew when she was dreaming. There was always something she could pinpoint as unreasonable. But apparently, seeing Hope getting hurt was uncomfortably reasonable.

She had seen her fight, and she knew it was foolish to worry about such a skilled, not to mention almost unfathomably agile, young woman. It was foolish to be terrified of Hope getting hurt, after only a few weeks of constant arguing, occasional smiling, and a few reassuring stares, the lake... It was foolish, but it felt realer than anything she had felt in a long time.

Echo laid still for a few seconds, trying to steady her breathing. A soft light crept through the window, and Echo realized dawn was upon her. She covered her face with her hands and sighed into them, getting used to the feeling of being in bed, only a few feet away from Hope, who was completely safe.

She was almost certain she would find Hope's peaceful sleeping figure only a few feet away from her, but she sat up hastily when she found that the makeshift bed beside her was empty.

"Hope?" She said into the only partly lit up room.

Had she not come back the night before? Echo had waited a few hours before letting herself doze off because she wanted to make sure Hope came back from her short walk. From what she remembered, Hope had walked in and whispered 'goodnight', and that had been the sole reason Echo fell asleep at all.

Echo was aware that Hope knew Skyring better than anyone else in that cabin. She scolded herself for letting a silly dream put her in such alertness.

The image of Hope's lips soaked in red, and her warm tears falling on Echo's face was creeping back into her mind, and that is when Echo decided she needed to distract herself. She stretched her arm out in an almost robotic manner and reached for the pair of Octavia's boots Hope had left by the bottom of her bed.