He'll have to break all the rules to keep her, but first she has to break just one and let him in...
It's taken four years, but Anna Fray has finally put the past behind her. Mostly. She fills her days working in a bar and her nights watching bad ro...
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I didn't know how long we talked on the sofa. The only measure of time passing was the increasing number of sweet wrappers appearing around Atticus and the muted glow of the sun as it transitioned from the crisp light of day to the warm glow of sunset. What I did know was that the correlation between the time passed and the information learnt was heavily skewed. By the time the living room was lit with the rosy hue of dusk, my head was filled with a whole new world. One that looked like the one I remembered but was so much more than I had thought it could be.
"So, you're saying the world is the way it is because there's a balance of energy?" I asked as I tried to understand this new reality.
"Yes," Atticus said simply as he lounged on the sofa. From the second he sat down he'd seem to relax into the fabric, like it wanted to hug his body as close as possible. In juxtaposition I sat bolt upright, my legs crossed on the sofa, as I absorbed every syllable that dropped from his lips.
"And bad things happen when that balance is disturbed?"
Atticus scrunched his face in thought as he answered. "I wouldn't say bad things. Unusual things."
Our definition of 'unusual' differed immensely. My understanding was that the last time the balance drifted too far to one side, New Orleans was devastated by a hurricane. The time before that Haiti fell victim to a catastrophic earthquake. These supposedly random natural disasters had been popping up throughout history, from the eruption of Vesuvius and the desolation of Pompeii to the tsunami that wiped out 300 000 people in Indonesia. Each one had been named an act of God, which given what I'd learnt probably wasn't that far from the truth. The difference was that God wasn't some omnipotent being sitting up in the sky, lording over all of creation. 'God' was a force, an ebb and flow of energy. One that had the power to destroy everything if it wasn't placated.
"And Watchers exist to keep the balance?"
He nodded as he threw the last mini egg into the air and caught it in his mouth. He'd done it a hundred times or more as we'd talked, and I'd yet to see him miss.
"How? I know you said you guys are more sensitive to the energy, hence the super speed, bat-level hearing and eagle-eyed vision." – he paused his crunching to give me a querying frown at my choice of descriptors, but I continued anyway –"but how do you balance energy?"
He rested his head back against the top of the grey sofa, staring up to the dusty ornate ceiling rose. I watched the way his throat bobbed as he swallowed down the last remnants of sugar.
All the hours we'd spent together had done nothing to dampen the hum of attraction I had felt since last night, but the more I'd learnt, the more I'd come to realise our worlds couldn't be further apart. That fact had helped to restrain the butterflies, and my past experiences had finished them off. Still, when I looked at him for a moment too long, I could feel the fizz of zombie butterflies trying to flutter back to life.
