Andrew

He pushed himself to keep walking once he got his bearings. If he took a break now, he might not be able to continue. Following the direction Natalie pointed to at first felt wrong. He saw the forest's end with more slopes. His doubts reached their peak when the village came out of view, and he came into line with the looming mountain overhead. It was not until he came out of the forest proper that he noticed the clear signs of human influence in the area.

Tree stubs stood freshly cut before him. And over the last slope, he saw an open field of swaying wheat lit under the moonlit sky. Among the sea of wheat stood a large barn and a wooden house, all on it’s lonesome.

A farmhouse. The relief he felt almost made him fall to the ground.

As he limped through the tall crops, he heard something brushing through the wheat beyond him. Alarmed, he fell into a fighting stance as they burst out of the crops towards him. Natalie stormed out of a wall of crops; her eyes glowed purple with condensed rage. Startled by her arrival, Andrew winced as he stumbled back on his bad ankle.

“F-fancy seeing you here!” he said. Without skipping a step, Natalie stepped over, balled her fist, and thumped Andrew on the chest.

“Don’t. ‘Natalie’. me!” She ended each of her words with a thump. Or perhaps it was more a punch than a thump. Either way, it hurt.

“Cycles, Natalie, what would you expect me to do - keep being selfish and have us all die!?” Andrew said.

“Yes!” The burning resolve in her eyes alone was enough to give him pause. She was being serious. With his mouth hanging agape, she continued, “No matter what, you must keep on living.” Looking down at her feet, Natalie pushed out as her balled hands loosened. Andrew did not like how she looked at him, how she so easily disregarded her own life over his own. He wanted to object, to challenge her words. But he could not form the words.

“No matter what happens, you’ve got to make it by your mother’s side. Until that happens, you’re not allowed to die!” She balled her hands into fists as her tone picked up. It was hard to tell under the night sky and the shade of these tall crops, but Andrew was sure that Natalie was crying. He gritted his teeth as a spiral of conflict raged on within his skull.

You’re wrong, Natalie; it is you who cannot die here," he wanted to say, but he said, “So that means I can die so long as I meet my mother first?” with a cheeky grin plastered on his face.

“I’m being serious, Andrew!” she said as she pushed him once again.

“Cycles, Natalie, I get it—really, I do! Just don’t start kicking my ankles!” Andrew said, his hands outstretched in protest. Natalie, who was about to push him again, paused and looked at his legs. Gritting her teeth in restrained understanding, she looked back up at Andrew.

“That just means that I get to kick you anywhere else, right?” Natalie asked in a tight voice.

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“If you admit that you’re still mad at me for pushing you back there, I’ll think about it,” Andrew said. Although he tried to keep a straight face, he could feel the corner of his lips betraying a smirk. Natalie just sniffed.

“You pull a stunt like that ever again, and I’ll kill you myself.” she practically stabbed every word into his chest with her finger. This made Andrew back up some more.

“Good, always wondered if a shadow could die twice,” Andrew mumbled. Natalie raised a hand as if to thump Andrew’s chest, but by the time the first reached him, it was hardly a push.

“Damned fool,” she hissed. Andrew could tell that she was barely containing her anger. With her fist still on his chest, she stepped in and bowed her head until it rested on top of her knuckles. The gesture caught him by surprise for a moment before he recovered and, placing a hand on her shoulder, he took a deep breath before looking up at the moonlit sky.

“Until I reach my mother, I have no intention of dying. So try not to worry,” he said. Natalie shook her head on top of her own knuckles.

“Nobody plans on dying,” she said.

“That’s because nobody plans on how not to die,” Andrew smiled.

“Was that meant to sound clever?”

“I was trying for more humour.”

“What would I tell your mother if you’d—” Her voice was barely a whisper. At first, the gesture surprised Andrew. It made him keenly self-aware of his own damp shirt and sweaty face. When he came to, however, he could feel the weight of her words. He could hear the tremble in her voice and feel the shaking in her palms. She’d been governing her emotions to prevent her powers from masking what little moonlight they had. Her emotions governed her angel powers. He’d seen her lose control of them plenty of times in their travels, witnessed the storms they made when she lost herself to anger. How much-exerted discipline must it have taken to hold off all those emotions? Gripping her shoulder tighter, Andrew sighed to himself.

“I messed up, sorry,” he whispered. Natalie simply responded by backing away, wiping her eye with one arm, and taking hold of his hand as she began leading him through the tall crops.

“You were heading the wrong way,” she said.

“Was not,” Andrew said. It came out a bit more defensive than he’d intended. Natalie looked back at him, unamused.

“What?” it was the truth. There was no way that he’d have missed the buildings he saw before entering the tall crops.

“It’s this way, right?” he pointed in the opposite direction he saw Natalie take to reach him. Before he could take three steps in that direction, Natalie took his hand and led him to a direction more to the left. Without her doing anything more than grabbing his hand, Andrew felt a surge run up his arm. He was nervous? It was stupid, but the simple gesture threw him through a loop. Trying to pull his mind away from thinking whether his hands were too sweaty, Andrew scrambled for something to say.

“So… it was a farmhouse you spotted way out here, right?” Andrew asked. Natalie glanced over at him without breaking pace.

“You saw it then…” she mumbled. He saw a taint of conflict on her face before she looked onwards. “We got lucky. The wolves stopped chasing us once she entered this wheat field. Had that not happened, I’m not sure I would have been able to—”

Andrew squeezed her hand, stopping her ramblings.

“You took a gamble, and it worked out. Thinking about what could have been is a waste of time,” he said. Slowing down, Natalie turned back to him for a moment before taking a composed breath and nodding.

“You’re right,” she said, picking up her pace.

“I take it Sophie and Flynn are talking to the landowners,” he said. Natalie nodded. As they reached the end of the fields of wheat, however, Natalie stopped abruptly, making him almost crash into her back. Before he could ask, she let go of his hand and was off running onwards without him.