Enshadowed

Is — is any of this real?" she asked. "Are you real?" He lifted a hand to her cheek, his fingers brushing her jaw. "Even if this is a dream," he whispered, "I'm not." Isobel's eyes widened, recognizing those words as her own, the same ones she had once uttered to him. She reached for him, her arms twining around his neck, drawing him closer so his scent poured over her, that combination of incense, citrus, and dried leaves overriding the funeral funeral smell of the crowding flowers. "Don't leave," she breathed. "I'm here," he whispered. "Right here. Waiting.

He clutched the watch hard in his fist, determined to destroy it, to prove that it couldn't be real. That she hadn't come here because of him, for him. That he hadn't done what he knew he had.

I keep telling myself That you’re just a girl. Another leaf blown across my path Destined to pass on And shrivel into yourself Like all the others. Yet despite my venom You refuse to wither Or fade. You remain golden throughout, And in your gaze I am left to wonder if it is me alone Who feels the fall.

Sleep now a little while Till within our dreams we wake Unfolding our Forever If only for Never’s sake And take me to your ever after Let’s hide behind our eyes Together pour through that door Where autumn never dies And I’ll sift my sands to your side Before we slip away Before we’re little more than silt Beneath the rocking waves And side by side we’ll fight the tide That sweeps in to take us down And hand in hand we’ll both withstand Even as we drown.

He opened his palm and saw that the watch remained. Still there. Still real. Varen looked up at the figure that stood atop the fountain. With a howl of rage, he made it burst apart. He fell to his knees amid the wreckage and floating dust. Crumpling into himself, he released a choking sob, knowing that he, too, belonged to the ruin.

She wanted to touch him, to throw her arms around him — but something held her back. Maybe it was the fear that her arms would pass right through him, that she would have come all this way only to find a ghost after all. As though he’d been able to read her thoughts, he slowly angled toward her. He raised his hands and held his palms out to her. Isobel lifted her own hands to mirror his. He pressed their palms together, his fingers folding down to lace through hers. She felt a rush of warmth course through her, a relief as pure and sweet as spring rain. He was real. This was real. She had found him. She could touch him. She could feel him. Finally they were together. Finally, finally, they could forget this wasted world and go home. "I knew it wasn’t true," she whispered. "I knew you wouldn’t stop believing." He drew her close. Leaning into him, she felt him press his lips to her forehead in a kiss. As he spoke, the cool metal of his lip ring grazed her skin, causing a shudder to ripple through her. "You..." His voice, low and breathy, reverberated through her, down to the thin soles of her slippers. "You think you’re different," he said. She felt his hands tighten around hers, gripping hard, too hard. A streak of violet lightning split the sky, striking close behind them. The house, Isobel thought. It had been struck. She could hear it cracking apart. She looked for only a brief moment, long enough to watch it split open. "But you’re not," Varen said, calling her attention back to him. Isobel winced, her own hands surrendering under the suddenly crushing pressure of his hold. A face she did not recognize stared down at her, one twisted with anger — with hate. "You," he scarcely more than breathed, "are just like every. Body. Else." He moved so fast. Before she could register his words or the fact that she had once spoken them to him herself, he jerked her to one side. Isobel felt her feet part from the rocks. Weightlessness took hold of her as she swung out and over the ledge of the cliff. As he let her go. The wind whistled its high and lonely song in her ears. She fell away into the oblivion of the storm until she could no longer see the cliff — could no longer see him. Only the slip of the pink ribbon as it unraveled from her wrist, floating up and away from her and out of sight forever.

He brushed his thumb across her lips. “I guess you're not as easy to forget as we'd hoped.

Dreaming aside," he went on, "how can you be so sure your world is the real one?

Can I tell you something?" He tilted his head, moving in closer still, so close that she could feel his breath against her cheek. "Do you want to know what my grandma used to say about kisses on the forehead?" He pressed his lips to her brow, holding the silk soft kiss for a long moment while Isobel stood in place, unable to bring herself to shove him away. "She told me it’s the kind of kiss we save for the dead.

I'll keep it," she said. "Then, when you get back, after you and the dark one are done making out and planning a future filled with blond-haired, green-eyed, pigment-challeneged rug rats, I'll bring it over and you can add it to your scrapbook, right before you start cooking me dinner. I like vegetarian lasagna with cottage cheese instead of ricotta." "Gwen?" "And don't forget the mushrooms. Garlic bread, too, please. That is, as long as your vampire lover doesn't object." "I want to say thank you," Isobel said. "For... everything." "No," Gwen said. "Thank you for the delicious dinner. I can almost taste the baklava you and Darth Vader will be making for dessert. Something tells me you're gonna have to look that one up, though.

That a single kiss from a boy who knew how to walk through dreams, who himself now seemed to be a dream, hadn't irrevocably altered her.

Even if this is a dream,” he whispered, “I'm not.

I told you you’d come," said a nearby voice, one Isobel knew well. "You said you would." (…) "You shouldn’t have, though," he said, and looked up, his face twisted with anger. "Even if we knew you would, you shouldn’t have." He got up and began moving toward her. "Why," he growled, "when we will only show you we are not worth it? Why, when we have no other choice but to prove to you we’re not worth it?

As though sensing her heightening alarm, Pinfeathers halted his advance. "I can’t help it that I’m susceptible to you," he whispered. "You know that. It’s just that you’re so...unreal...and so I have to touch you. If only to be certain that I’m not the one who’s dreaming. You see, I hear that sort of thing is going around.

To Madeline, This subtle second self Sheaf of me Can do more than you ever could. Like you, it can leave And go Somewhere else. The night splits me in two. I disconnect — To sink, to fall, to fly And rage Forever And always Without you

The pain in her body came first, an intense surge of fire that raged like lava through her veins. But it could not compare with what followed after. A wail rose up from her depths. It left her as an inhuman cry. Finally, she remembered everything.

You can’t understand us. We don’t even understand ourselves.

Much like books, she could tell how voiceless things had provided a brand of companionship more compatible to his nature than human friendship had ever been. These things, locked in their inanimate ways, fed him ideas, she thought. They whispered their tales to him through unmoving lips and he listened, opening himself to their world so much more than any normal passerby. That much was evident in the way he’d taken the photos, as if he’d caught each soulless thing in a candid moment of secret animation. Like they’d sensed him coming and so turned themselves his way because they knew that he held the power to translate their silence into words.

She is the harbinger of nightmares as well as death, destruction, and insanity. Said to reign in an alternate dimension, a bleak and desertlike twilight version of reality, Lilith has long been hailed as the queen of mental darkness.

Memories, they are the cobwebs of the mind.You can try and sweep them away, but it seems as if some trace always remains..

His voice ripped through her, low, soft, and a little husky- like the hushed crackling of an old fashioned record player just before the music starts

I can't help it that I'm susceptible to you," he whispered. "You know that. It's just that you're so...unreal...and so I have to touch you. If only to be certain that I'm not the one who's dreaming. You see, I hear that sort of thing is going around.

She felt him pull her to him. His voice, acidic and sharp, buzzed in her ear. "Soon...I'll be all that's left.

But, Isobel thought with a bleak and sad smile, what better place to bury what was dead than in a cemetery?

Side by side we'll fight the tide, That sweeps in to take us down. Hand in hand we'll both withstand, Even as we drown.

In some way, he had belonged to the deepest essence of Varen’s being. All the broken pieces of himself that Varen had buried, all those bits that terrified his own mind, all accumulated into one beast, a deranged creature born out of everything he knew he wasn’t supposed to do or feel. An entity made of desires and emotions and all the longings Varen could never admit to anyone—not even himself.