The Venantium Auallonia Trilogy: Midsummer Sky

Chapter 7: A Fool's Dance

"Life is a question of nerves, and fibers, and slowly built-up cells in which thought hides itself and passion has its dreams. You may fancy yourself safe and think yourself strong. But a chance tone of color in a room or a morning sky, a particular perfume that you had once loved and that brings subtle memories with it, a line from a forgotten poem that you had come across again, a cadence from a piece of music that you had ceased to play... I tell you, that it is on things like these that our lives depend. "
― Oscar Wilde, the Picture of Dorian Gray

The last thing I expected while strolling into Gabriel's third floor apartment was for it to look almost empty except for a few piles of boxes in the hallway entrance. He stalked ahead of me and turned into a small out cove that looked like a tiny kitchen similar to my kitchen at the cottage; despite everything, I smiled fleetingly to myself. The appliances looked as if they were a hundred years old and running off of little bits of electric.

"Are you hungry? I could make us sandwiches," he offered. I shook my head no and barely looked at him. I couldn't. I didn't want him to see how much pain I was in even though I glued myself to his side since he found me about to crumple to pieces in front of Patrick's body.

Everything in my life was gone now. Every person had been killed, burned, maimed, or all three combined. From what I could comprehend on the drive over to Gabriel's studio apartment, he had been coming by almost every day to meet up with Patrick to search for me. All my whereabouts had been sealed by the court system so no one who was part of legal society could give them any tips, but they found their ways around it all. Gabriel had a friend who worked as a high ranking cop in Long Island and he saw me being carted around at St. Liza's a week ago. They tried to follow the trail, but there was no proof I was there. Plus since it is a hospital for mostly criminally insane, they didn't let in hardly any visitors.

Gabriel was coming by earlier to meet up again when he saw the front door being opened by someone he'd never seen before. He ended up being too late to help Patrick; the intruder killed him and left. I assumed it was the girl, who brought me there, and he said it was; she had the same rain jacket on when she broke in the first time. When Gabriel started to ask me who she was, I went silent. Not yet; I can't tell him yet.

The sick, empty feeling rose up fast and the queasiness tried to overwhelm me. I looked up to find Gabriel watching me again. He came over, placing his soft and warm hands on my shredded cheeks with a weak, but encouraging smile. "Let's get you cleaned up. Then we'll talk, okay?"

I merely nodded, still not responding in any other way. He made his way out of the alcove of the kitchen with me in tow; my hand in his careful grip and into a nearly empty bedroom with only an old metal frame bed messed up with blankets and a seemingly broken and beaten up burrow. He instructed me to sit while he went to go find his first aid kit, which only took about a minute for him to find. I stared emptily out the window watching the storm that never seemed to end even behind the paint cracked windows of his apartment. It was merciless. I didn't pay attention as he dabbed and cleaned my face and everything else of the dried blood the shadow and his loony mistress had caused. I could faintly hear Gabriel tell me the worst of my injuries; my wrists were raw and cuts along with my arms and legs, my nose was bruised badly and could swell but it wasn't broken, there were many shallow cuts along my face, but they weren't deep enough to scar. Then he told me I was shaking from all the wet clothes I was wearing, and that there were some clothes that I might feel better in in his burrow. Apparently they would be huge on me, but I didn't mind. As soon as he got up, the lights that were embedded in the ceiling crackled off, and Gabriel groaned and claimed he was going to get some candles.

It surprised me at how much he was doing for my sake. Yes, I had just lost another best friend, but that wasn't the point. My shadow wanted me suffering by killing off everyone I knew. If he had known the reasons why, Gabriel probably would be running scared in the other direction, but he remained like a steady beacon of hope. I really hope Gabriel wasn't next on the list to go.