There is the scent too. Wonder follows it; wonder about how a boy can smell like that when he probably has no idea. He smells like the woods in the winter or the rain when it first falls, or maybe it’s just the way he always smells and there is no way to define it.

He reflects on all the times he thought she wasn’t sure of her feelings for him, when perhaps she might’ve been taking a leisurely stroll across Elijah’s heart, leaving footprints behind that he’d never seen.

He wishes he could remember everything. Anything. He doesn’t sense a bone in his body that can feel compassion or worthiness. Self-pity hides away as well, the lowest form of emotion not even capable of resting in his wrecked mind.

How would Elijah ever understand a life that is dark more than light? Or a shadow of someone who follows her around, and when she least expects it, taps her on the back and asks, where are you going, Seraphina?

The butterflies swirl again in Sera’s stomach. Perhaps they have brought along fireflies too, to light up her soul.

She pulls her hand away and Damian feels the sensation of falling, a somersault into a foreign abyss where a girl with eggplant hair and a hoop in her brow waits in the darkness.