Just as I am about to look down, hands land on my shoulders.
I feel them. How cold and stiff they are, the roughness of the fingers digging into my shirt; they cause me to jump out of my skin.
“Sunday, you shouldn’t look.”
Flinching, I twist around. “Why are you here?” I ask.
It’s the last person I expect to see.
They raise their lips in a knowing smile. “One of us is going to die.”
Staring at the space between us, I wait for a light to form, for it to guide me in this instance, just as it has so many times before. It takes only a few seconds for the red strand to shine brightly through the darkened skies. It wraps around us both, covers us in its weight, douses us in its essence.
I must have been dazed not to see it before, but now that I do, it nearly blinds me.
“What is going on? What is this? When did this happen?” My hands stretch out around me. “And why are you here?”
“It hasn’t happened…yet.” The hands that I had knocked from my shoulders, pull back further. The person steps back. “But we can’t stop it.”
“What does that even–”
They push me with all of their might, the red explodes around us, a million ashes in the sky tossing and tumbling.
I lose my balance, falling back, over the guardrail.
Lightning ignites around me as I tumble to my demise.
Down and down and down.
***
Slap!
“Wake up you stupid girl!”
Slap!
“You’re not going to fucking die on me now! You idiot.”
Slap!
“Childish!”
Slap!
“Undeserving brat!”
My eyes flash open, but it is nearly just as dark. It takes a few beats to understand where I am.
What’s going on?
I am somehow in Luna’s lap, her hand poised to hit my face again, my cheeks throb from her previous assault. My head pounds from where I hit it.
Seeing my eyes open now, she wraps her arms around me, hugging me to her. “Thank god. Thank god.” The red that shrouded her before has been completely replaced with purple ethereal threads.
“Luna, your mother’s alive,” I blurt out. “She isn’t dead.”
Luna flinches, her jaw clenching. “You don’t have to lie to me, Sunday. I heard the men shouting about it as they left. Carrie saw the news–” She pauses.
