The Time It Takes To Fall

Falling

USA, 2019 A.D.

The train station was empty. All around Cinder there were benches filled with nothing but ghosts. Even the desk where she had bought her ticket was now vacated, leaving her entirely alone within the station.

She sat on a cold bench, feeling the hardness of it beneath her and allowing for the frigid ice of the metal to seep into her skin. The feeling grounded her to reality— of what she was about to do. It made her feel something other than all the other emotions raging within herself. It somehow allowed for her to forget her life and think only of how cold her legs were.

Cinder shivered and zipped her black jacket up over her Nirvana t-shirt, though it was of no use. Her clothes were still wet from her walk to the train station, and she imagined that they would remain damp and cold until she reached Seattle.

Briefly, she considered taking out a pair of clothes from within her backpack and changing right there, but then remembered that there were probably cameras. And besides, someone could walk in at any moment and she didn't want to spend hours on a train with someone who had seen her in the midst of shimmying out of her wet clothes.

So she sat there, trembling against the cold air, alone in a train station. She found it odd that there was no jazzy music playing, or train ushers watching the tracks. Of course it was a Tuesday afternoon, but surely someone else would be traveling somewhere.

As if conjured from her thoughts, a person walked through the doorway and into the train station. Cinder looked at them, her brow furrowed as she took in the mass of brown. At first she thought that the person was wearing a full-body suit or dirt-colored material, until she realized that this person was wearing actual mud upon their skin.

A trickle of fear ran down her spine, causing her to shiver for an entirely different reason than before. She was alone in a train station with a man who wore mud for clothes— well, perhaps he was wearing clothing beneath all the grime, but Cinder could not see it.

The person raced through the room, their breathing both heavy and unlabored at the same time. They were glancing about the station, as if searching for someone within the emptiness. Then their eyes landed on Cinder and she froze.

She knew those eyes— the soft brown that she had stared into on so many occasions and dreamed about whenever they were not within her gaze. She somehow had memorized the exact shape and shade of them within the month that they had known one another— when had she done that? His eyes were somehow as familiar to Cinder as the shades of yellow within her kitchen or the beat of her own heart. She wasn't sure why she knew those eyes so well, but she knew that she could never forget them.

"Kai?" Cinder choked out. She forgot the cold bench beneath her and the way her clothes stuck to her skin. "What are you doing here?"

He wasn't out of breath despite his race into the station, but he appeared to be at a loss for words. His eyes roved over her, taking in her sitting upon the bench and her green backpack that rested beside her. Then his eyes flitted onto hers and she felt electricity run through her veins.

Vaguely, she remembered that she was mad at him— so angry in fact that she never wanted to see him again. The only problem was that she couldn't recall why. Because seeing him there in front of her caused every negative emotion to flee, allowing for only a bubble of warmth to bloom within her chest.

Slowly, Kai approached, a hand lifted before him as if to demonstrate that he meant her no harm. It was this hand that drew Cinder's attention away from his eyes and the memories of his kindness and to the blood upon his fingers and the things she had accused him of the night before— the things that she didn't believe.