Page 118 of Serpent In White
We reach the rock. It’s just a rock, I guess, in theory, but there are so many things happening around it.
The only way to describe it would be a shift in the atmosphere. A sudden change in the air around us, like when there’s radiation nearby or something.
Everything just feelsoffall of a sudden.
Rhiannon is remembering how she touched it last time; she sat on it. She’s afraid to do so again… but she wants to. For me.
“You don’t have to…” I whisper. She looks up at me, her face radiating confusion, likely at the fact that I just read her mind.
“We’re doing it. Together.” She tugs me forward, and we both sit, side by side, on the black rock.
As soon as my ass hits it, I realize this is no rock, like what you’d find in nature. This is something else entirely. Something dark; a living, breathing creature.
I can feel a heartbeat in it, linking to my own.
It doesn’t even feel like arockbeneath me, but rather water and mud. I actually look down at my pants to see if they’re soaking through.
I don’t see anything.
Rhiannon’s thoughts are spiraling. Her breathing has picked up next to me, and she’s sucking in air fast, her chest heaving beneath her hoodie.
“Don’t let it take you, Rhi,” I mumble to her, though I’m not so sure I can keep this thing from sweeping me up.
“What do you see?” Her voice asks, and as soon as the last syllable leaves her lips, I’m in a different place entirely.
I’m in the ravine, on the day my parents were found. I can see myself, my twelve-year-old self, gaping at their dead bodies with anguish in his eyes. He throws up, and then Darian rushes over, scooping him up and carrying him away.
Darian looks younger too, obviously. He would be about twenty-one at the time.Our young leader.Yet he still looks the same as he does now, a little less wisdom around the eyes, a little thinner and slightly longer hair.
But he’s beautiful, and oh so sad as he carries a young me through the woods, shushing my cries. He brings me to a spot I recognize now as the overlook by Drake’s cabin. There’s a bench, and he plops us down on it, holding my younger self, comforting him.
But from this angle, I can see us both. And my focus is on Darian.
He looks distraught. I knew he was upset about the deaths of my parents. They were his family, and Darian feels a lot. It was a devastating hit for him; for all of us.
But the way he’s crying, quietly, likely so that the new orphan doesn’t hear him… He’s almost inconsolable.
It hurts my heart to see this. For my parents, yes, and for my young self, who was so very affected by the loss of his parents. But also, for Darian. For what he lost, which seems to be more than just two family members…
I feel tears seeping from my eyes, though I don’t even know where I am in this vision. It’s like I’m up in the sky, in the trees, looking down on the whole scene. And then movement nearby catches my vision.
Drake.
I catch him lingering a few feet away, watching Darian hold young me. He also looks upset, but in a different sort of way than Darian and me.
He doesn’t necessarily look surprised by what’s happening. He appears somber as he rakes his long fingers through his hair, keeping himself hidden from us. He slinks around a tree and leans his back against it, closing his eyes tight, his head shaking over and over again.
There’s something I can hear… It must be in his mind, because his lips aren’t moving.
I’m sorry.
That’s it. On repeat, in Drake’s voice. His deep tone of typically indifferent emotions.
Guilt-ridden and exhausted.I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry.
Confusion racks my mind. There’s no way he could be guilty of anything… It’s impossible. I refuse to believe Drake had anything to do with my parents plummeting from up here.
Yet he’s apologizing. He’s so very deeply sorry, I feel it in my bones.
