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The tendrils of her silver blonde hair wisp around her face as she stands on the edge, the wind howling and biting cold. She shouldn’t be here, but her mind feels blank and she doesn’t understand what’s going on. She knows she is cold, her skin, her hair, her heart. She knows she shouldn’t be here, but she can’t remember why, only that she doesn’t care. The stone beneath her bare feet is cracked and jagged, and the walls of the building behind her are decrepit and risk falling over at any moment. She feels the overwhelming urge to fly, so sudden and persistent that she simply can’t ignore it. Her white gown billows around her, and before taking the leap, she glances back. She stops.
A boy, pale and shadowed, is there staring at her through the doorless door frame connecting the balcony to the unknown building. She doesn’t know him, but she feels her icy heart thud harder as she instinctively backs away from the ledge. She wants to try to explain herself, to ask for help or knowledge of where she is, but instead she holds the boy’s gaze, fierce and unwavering. His dark eyes gleam in the impossibly bright moonlight, and he takes a step toward her. His equally dark hair sits matted to his forehead, as if he were dunked into a water tank, and his eyes have purple rims that sit under them, his exhaustion apparent.
‘Why have you come here?’ she attempts to ask, but finds that no words are emitted from her vocal cords. She isn’t frightened by this revelation, instead baffled even more as the boy takes another step forward.
He isn’t wearing a coat, only a white sleeveless shirt; isn’t he cold? He, too, is barefoot as he continues to walk forward, stopping beside her and hanging his head. She stares at the side of his face, his soft features and tired expression, wondering, wondering, wondering. She knows nothing but the cold that wraps around her, embracing her as an old friend, and the uncertainty clouding her thoughts, which aren’t full thoughts at all, but are just the beginnings of thoughts before they are carried away, drifting on the wind of this cool night, leaving her muddled and continually disoriented.
She hears the boy mumble and take a deep breath, and all too quickly does she feel dread pool into her chest, hot and terrifying, conflicting with the coldness in her heart. She doesn’t know why she feels this way, only that it’s painful and obvious, tearing her from the inside out until all she wants to do is scream. She attempts to do just that, clutching her hair and screaming with all of the breath she can muster. The sound is absent, however the boy looks up with a bewildered expression, as if he’s focusing on a noise far in the distance. When she is forced to stop, for her lungs cannot give anymore, her attempt proves futile when the boy hangs his head once more, the only sound to be heard is that of the crickets in the grasses far beyond the unknown building.
She joins him, hanging her head over the edge as glossy tears fall from her eyes to the far, far ground below. She wishes she could understand, and somehow feels that she may have, sometime ago, a time she cannot recall. Her hair falls in a curtain over her face, and she sees the boy’s feet shuffle slowly, closer and closer to the end, and her head hurts, her heart pounds, the cold is numbing her hands and her feet, and she doesn’t know if she’s thinking or if she’s even real, but she puts out an arm to stop the boy.
He’s flung backward, crashing into the wall next to the doorframe, a sizable dent made in the concrete as he slides to the jagged stone floor. Her hair is whipping around her head as the wind picks up again, and she feels something vicious come over her; she will make sure he never comes back here. The boy’s eyes open slowly, confusion at first, but terror setting in quickly as he scans the surrounding area, peeking his head into the doorway and then looking back out at the ledge again. The trees are shaking and she is screaming again, her black eyes rolling back into her head and her jaw falling open wider than should be possible. She feels the vibrations in her chest as the boy cowers and covers his ears, scrambling to his feet and bolting out the door frame and down the broken stairs.
She stops screaming and feels her chest loosen. She isn’t at ease, but somehow reassured, and the wind continues its steady pace through the night. She knows she shouldn’t be here, but she doesn’t care as she feels herself fade into the air, awaiting something once again, wondering, wondering, wondering.
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