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It isn’t thick and masculine. It’s thin, frail, and feminine.
I tilt my head to the left and look into…my. Mouth. Drops. Open. I look into my own eyes. Emerald-green, long lashes, and straight honey-blond hair.
“It’s just me and you now. I’m not going to leave you, Skylenna.”
Scarlett. My sweet, sad Scarlett. Her soft, full lips shift as she speaks. There’s color in her cheeks, life in her thoughtful gaze. Her warm skin tingles into mine like it’s made of electricity.
I can’t move. My eyes don’t blink. My heart stops.
“Is this…a memory?” I ask in a shaky breath.
“No.” She smiles at me like she can really see me. Like she’s really touching me. “This is real. I’ve been waiting so long for you to reach the part of your brain that can see me on the other side.”
A powerful stream of wind roars around us as I stare at my twin sister.
“Wait, are you saying…”
“Yes, Skylenna.” Scarlett delicately places a hand on my cheek. “I’m a spirit. You’ve finally accessed the part of your brain that can see all who have passed on.”
38. Bonds Through Life And Death
Skylenna
I slide off the edge and onto the roof’s floor in a crying heap next to Scarlett.
“You’re really here,” I say through a gasp.
“I’ve always been here. I’ve heard every prayer. Every thought asking me to watch over you. I’ve never left your side,” she says with that special smile she’d save for a rainy day.
And this most certainly is my day of storm.
I stare at her through the thick glaze of tears, memorizing the details of her face I took for granted. The way she blinks slowly, like she knows something I don’t. The small ring of brown lining the outside of the circle of deep, forest green in her irises. She’s always looked sick, though. The kind that makes your eyes puffy or your cheeks sunken in. With chapped lips, missing patches of hair, and the whites of her eyes always yellow or pink.
She doesn’t look that way now.
She’s healthy. Beaming with a soft white light. She’s happy.
My Scarlett is happy.
“You’re…okay?” She knows what I’m asking. At least, she should. It’s been my greatest fear since she left me.
“I made it to heaven, Skylenna. And it’s so beautiful here.” She hugs her golden arms to her chest, looking up at the cloudy sky and seeing something I don’t.
“But the Bible…”
“There are things in the Bible that were rewritten, misinterpreted, or taken too literally. Not to mention, it was written in a different world altogether. God knows my heart. He knew how much pain I suffered. He welcomed me home with open arms.”
I cry into my hands, thanking God with more relief than I’ve ever felt. She wraps herself around me, breathing only love and light into my being as I shudder, and my sobs turn into bellowing wails. I tell her what I did to Ruth. I tell her about the day I watched Dessin die in my arms. About the asylum. About Absinthe and Albatross. And she holds me from behind, rocking me side to side as I get it all out.
“God gave you all of this to bear because you aren’t any ordinary girl,” she whispers against my tangled hair. “You are his warrior angel. You are cut from a cloth of the Almighty. You, sweet Skylenna, are the best there is.”
Her words trigger a wave of reactionary goose bumps to rise over every inch of skin.
“You and Dessin were meant to change worlds. Can’t you feel it?”
I can. Like an eternal flame that was lit in the base of my soul. The connection we’ve always had has felt stronger than just a childhood friendship. It has felt written in the stars. Biblically bound to our fates.
“And you want to know something else?” she asks, and it’s so strange that it’s my voice. A little rougher around the edges. A little different in tone. I haven’t heard it in so long. Only in my memory.
