05-14-2017, 08:24 PM
Things break.
Contagion knows this better (or worse, maybe, depending how you look at it) than many others, a boy who was born to be broken. He walked for years on thin ice, counting breaths, constantly alert for danger – there were so many dangers.
Yet – as it so often goes – he was blind to what would be the ultimate danger, the last.
The last, until it wasn’t, until he woke up whole with no memory of how he became unbroken.
And then, more miracles – the glass body gone, replaced with stout muscle, paper wings turning to bone and feather.
A man, remade.
But things break.
Such a breaking plays across her face now, he sees, a crumpling of her features. His heart and breath lurch. So maybe she didn’t forget. Maybe he’s sorry for that.
(He wishes she forgot. Wishes he would forget.)
She asks an impossible question - how is this possible - and he looks at her and tries to stay steady, stay stoic.
“I don’t know,” he says, then, not having anything else in the way of explanations, he repeats himself.
“I don’t know.”
contagion
be careful making wishes in the dark