✧
{The baseball cap whipped off his head and flew above him, lost to the stars [f o r e v e r].}
It was a strange dream. It started that he was falling. But not in the panicked sense that Heiji had accustomed himself to when such things occurred. He’d felt surprisingly… calm. He wouldn’t say free, because he wasn’t flying, but he could see the blue sky and the sun and the clouds and many miles before he would hit the ground.
He was freefalling; he had nothing on his back to pull in the event he got too close to the ground. No parachute, no wingsuit. Just him, with his back to the ground, staring up at the open azure above him. It was so [p e a c e f u l]…
Then he saw her, on the corner of his eyes. She was falling, like him, but her back was to the sky and she stared at horror to the incoming ground. Fearfully, she covered her eyes and sobbed.
{For freefalling, it was absolutely silent. No wind rushed by his ears and whipping his hair about. Without the wind, it felt as though he was floating.}
“Nani? What’s wron’?”
He found nothing wrong with their situation; in fact, he was quite content.
>> “I don’t like being up so high.”
Her voice was clear, even though she would not look at him and her face was covered by her hands.
“Oh? Are ya scared?”
>> “Isn’t that common sense!? We’re falling!”
“Uh…”
He craned his neck backward to see the ground. It was still so many miles away (30 was the closest answer he could come up with), but they must have reached [t e r m i n a l] velocity by this time. They would hit the ground in less than fifteen minutes. Finally, he turned back to her again.
“Are ya really gonna spend th’ last few minutes starin’ at the ground? Ain’t it better ta just look at the sky an’ pretend ya’re flyin’?”
Quickly, Lila looked at him, but he couldn’t quite read the expression on her face. Currently, that logic seemed perfectly sound. Why waste a last moment on fear when death was imminent? Why not enjoy the rest of [l i f e] while it was still there?
“It feels like we’re angels.”
>> “You’re an idiot.”
He [l a u g h e d], loud and wholeheartedly.
“Even in my dreams, onee-chan, ya’re still fussy.”
They met gazes, for a brief moment, and then all turned dark, as though they’d fallen into rain clouds. Even without vision, he could feel harsh vertigo spin him upside down and, [S L A M!]
His eyes snapped open and he found himself staring at a much paler, darker sky. No… Not a sky. A ceiling. He was no longer falling, but already on the ground. He was back home. No… Back at Spiral’s End. Still in Amaranth. Still dead.
Still under a whole new sky.
In his sleep, he’d thrown himself off the bed and now he was half on the floor with his legs still on the bed and his back against the cold hardwood. Blankets currently covered only the right side of his body.
His expression turned sour, knitting his eyebrows together.
“’Stare at the sky an’ pretend ya’re flyin’’… Sounds like some’hin’ that guy would say. Even in death, Kudou, ya still got some impact on me…”
But something bothered him. That girl, who’d he’d met only once. Was it normal to dream of people you knew hardly anything about. It must’ve been her eyes. … And her attitude.
“Tch. What a strange woman…”
He could see the sun rising through the curtains of his bed room, casting a single sunbeam into his room, right across the bridge of his nose – just barely missing his eyes. His expression rested, taking to stare into space, waiting a few moments. He didn’t feel like getting up quite yet. Not yet.
“Strange, indeed…”
