The Butterfly Effect: I Refuse This Ending Chapter 51: Dream

(Lina’sPov)

I had a dream.

A very bad one.

A forest which was burning and in the middle of the fire Kael was leaving. Walking away down a road I could not see the end of, and I was standing at the start of it watching him go and my feet would not move and my voice would not co out and he did not look back once.

Nobody ever did.

Leaving alone.

I woke up in the dormitory room and lay still for a mont with the ceiling above and the dream still sitting in my chest.

I sat up.

***

The dormitory room was smaller than the guest room at the Ardyn estate.

I stood in the doorway and looked at it. Stone walls, a single window, a desk with a chair whose armrests had been worn smooth.. Academy-issue linens folded at the foot of the bed.

A small mirror propped on the desk.

My na was on the door.

Lina Vale. S Class. Room 14.

I sat in the chair and looked at my reflection.

My face was red.

Yesterday he did sothing bad. I’m not going to talk to him.

Why do you ask?

Because Kael was talking to soone else.

Is he going to leave like everyone else?

Am I bad?

I pinched my left cheek and watched it get worse and then let it go.

I tried the right side. Sa results.

I put both hands flat on the desk and looked at my reflection, neither of us had anything useful to offer..

You won’t fall.

I pinched my cheek again.

The problem was the mory of waking up without knowing who I was and the first clear thing in all of that being a voice and a hand and a potion delivered in the most unreasonable way anyone had ever delivered anything.

The problem was also the cave entrance in the mornings. The pillow down the middle of the bed.

The problem was the laugh that ca out.

I pressed both palms against my face.

Not helpful.

I had been without my mories when it was happening. I had not known who I was. And in all of that the one consistent thing had been him every morning, every evening, talking to directly. He talked to everything without adjusting it for the fact that I could barely respond.

He had not treated like soone who was broken.

I don’t understand.

Am I bad for wanting him to stay with ?

I looked at my reflection.

The girl in the mirror looked back at with red cheeks and the expression of soone who had asked a question.

No. Not bad.

Just soone who had been left before and recognized the shape of it coming from a long way away.

My parents had left. It was not their choice,I knew that, the mories had co back clear enough to know that. But knowing the reason did not change the space the leaving created.

And then a forest. And then a voice saying hey.

I understood why that had landed the way it had.

I pressed my palms flat against my face and breathed.

Sylph moved at the edge of my awareness. At the side of my consciousness.

You had the dream again.

"Yes."

The sa one.

"Yes."

You have had it four tis since arriving here.

"yeah"

It’s not real.

"I know..."

"But It does not feel like it is not real."

I know, Sylph said.

"He is not everyone else,"

Sylph did not answer imdiately.

No,he is not.

I lowered my hands from my face and looked at my reflection.

Still red. The dream was still sitting sowhere in the upper part of my chest doing its unhelpful thing.

Can I ask you sothing?

"Yes."

When you were in the Ardyn estate. Before your mories co back. What did you feel when he was not there?

I thought about that

"It felt like sothing was missing and the space felt empty."

"I followed him to the forest that morning because I woke up and he was not there and the room felt empty and I went looking without a thought."

You have always known where he is, Sylph said. Even before your mories co back. You could feel where he was.

I looked at her.

"What does that an,"

I do not know exactly, she said. But I think it is worth noting.

"Sylph."

Yes.

"He is going to leave."

I don’t think he will.

The right question is what you do with the ti that is not yet over. You are standing at the start of a road and watching the end of it. But you have not walked it yet. You are grieving a loss that has not happened.

"I am trying to be practical about it."

You are trying to be finished with it before it starts, That is not practical. That is just a kind of fear.

...

"He said you won’t fall," I said quietly. "On the road. When I was going to get on his back and I hesitated ."

"He ant it. I could tell he ant it."

Yes.

"People who are only leaving do not say things they an."

Yeah, Sylph said. They do not.

When he leaves. If he leaves. I’m going to..."

I stopped again.

Sylph waited.

"Never mind,"

You already know the answer,That is why you stopped.

I looked at her.

"Co with ,

Where.

"I do not know yet. Sowhere that is not this room."

I stood up and wrapped my coat around myself and looked at the door with my na on it.

The academy was quiet at this hour. The corridors would be empty. The grounds would be cold and dark except for the mana-lit paths that ran between the buildings.

I opened the door.

The corridor was empty.

I walked in.

I did not have a destination.

I walked past the stairs and along the upper corridor and down the far end where the corridor turned and there was a window that looked out over the northern grounds.

I stopped at the window.

The grounds below were quiet. Academy buildings visible in the dark, mana-lit at the edges, the eastern tower the tallest thing visible from this angle.

I leaned my forehead against the glass.

Stop treating it like sothing that is already over, Sylph said.

It has not happened yet.

I looked at the grounds.

The cold coming off the glass where my forehead was resting.

I stayed at the window until the grounds lightened, the sky doing the slow thing it did before sunrise.

Then I went back to Room "..." and opened the door. Light were off.

My face was still slightly red.

I left it.

I just went to sleep.

Next morning.