Devilborn by Ivana Skye

Author:Ivana Skye [Skye, Ivana]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Eta Carinae Press
Published: 2021-02-02T16:00:00+00:00

Ain’t No End to the Pain

When we make it to the wilds, though, there’s too much for me to talk. She—Laranie—touched me, she kissed me, and I don’t know how to process through it. I don’t. It ain’t the burning hills and wide open skies that I know so well, and I don’t know what it is.

So he’s gone somewhere further between the hills, into some ravine that I never would’ve much bothered spending time in. But it does remind me a little of him, and that almost makes me smile.

He was thinking he could sleep there, and I was thinking I could sleep here on this hill where the grass don’t dare to cut me, but I’m not so sure I can.

But the stars burn bright above and I know his presence down in the ravine, I know it ‘cause it fills the air and I can breathe it right in. It’s subtle humidity, a storm in the distance. It’s kinda like sleeping next to him, only the walls between our rooms separating us, except my mind’s spinning way too much for that kind of rest.

My thoughts drift like this as my hand presses against the ground, as I look at the sky and the stars slowly shift, Polaris pulling them all around from its axis, spinning them greedily. Until eventually I hear another shifting, one that’s like ripples. I sit up, though I’ve had no rest, not any.

“Well,” he says. “I at least slept some down there. The groundwater there moves almost like a river, though you probably didn’t know that.”

I shake my head. I didn’t. But I know why he knows, the way awareness drifts when we’re asleep, the way we feel like us but also feel the land beneath our bodies, or the sky above us. The way we feel it outside or in, the way I always watch the sunrise through my closed lids, thinking of little or nothing, but feeling plenty. But tonight I couldn’t get the thoughts to stop, and I couldn’t sleep, not even with the stars burning the way I always want them to.

“Didn’t sleep any myself,” I say. My voice burns against my throat, and I almost want to rub my eyes. I’m exhausted. But I can’t say for sure that even a bed would help, though his beds sure are comfortable.

“Ah,” he says. “Because of her…?”

“Her and you,” I say, smiling sadly, ‘cause it’s true.

“Oh. I could head home, you know.”

And I can’t help but think that maybe that’d be best, but there’s something sad in his eyes, like the distance of the storm I can almost hear under his skin. And this time I don’t even think about it, I let the twitching in my fingers turn into an actual reaching out until somehow I manage to touch the back of his hand.

“Ohhhh,” he says.

I blink as if realizing what I’ve done, pulling my hand away though I still almost feel the smoothness of his skin against my fingers.

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