#ender esperit

Ender had seen her. He’d seen her thin, fragile frame pacing along the empty hallway. He hadn’t meant to go up there, he had thought that he was supposed to make a left turn down the hallway past the stairs to get to his room but it only took a few steps down the dank and dark hallway for him to realize his room wouldn’t be there.

The hall was sucked of all life, there weren’t even any spiders walking about the corners of baseboards or along the webs woven between what seemed and felt like every corner. In his turning around his hand accidentally brushed a rusted doorknob and all the webs with it.

Furiously he swatted his hand and whipped off a bundle of webs, the thin, sticky threads airily floating to the floor. He knew it wasn’t his hall, yet he still moved onward. There was something about the hall that had him mesmerized and nervous all at once. He knew it was bright outside, his eyes still burned from his walk home from class where the sun blared down upon them, yet none of that light entered the halls. If he hadn’t known any better, he would have thought it was the dead of the night.

“H-Hello?” he called out to no one in particular, his voice bouncing from one end of the hall to the other. His hand grabbed one of the doorknobs but he drew his hand back. As curious as he was he silently reminded himself it’d be impolite to hop into any room as he pleased. Instead he knocked and waited even though he knew there couldn’t have been anyone inside.

With no answer, he stepped forward. Every room within the hall was shut except for one. He hesitated outside of the frame. He shouldn’t look in, it wasn’t his place to, but it was quiet there. It was nice there. He had been looking for somewhere quiet where he could practice on his own. Ender took a deep breath and hesitantly rounded the corner.

There she was. Clove.

His heart sunk to the floor. His brows lifted, his eyes widened, and it took everything in him to keep still, torn between breaking down right then and there or crossing the room and pulling her into his arms. The last time he’d seen her…The last time he’d seen her was outside of the woods when he heard all the sirens, saw all the lights, spotted all the paramedics running to and from a broken up frame amongst the leaves before bundling her, his girl, into a body bag. But the last time he had really seen her was in his bedroom. The day before she was sad that she couldn’t see the stars from where they lived so he painted his whole ceiling like the night sky. He’d spent hours making sure he had it right, Ursa Major, Andromeda – everything. He even made sure that Cassiopeia was clinging onto her tilted throne. The last he’d really seen of her he’d seen the stars reflected in her eyes and Clove had told him how beautiful the stars looked but she didn’t get to see them like he did – she didn’t get to see them in her eyes. He thought it was such a shame she’d never get to see the stars like that so he snapped a photo of her and the two slept next to one another.

That was the last time he’d seen her moving, until the empty room within the abandoned hallway.

Her full lips were curved downward, her eyes lidded with loneliness, and all the while he couldn’t help himself but want to pull her into his arms and show her those stars again. She wasn’t looking at him like she normally did. Her eyes were glued out a window towards a wrought iron fence, her dark hair falling in tousles past her shoulder blades. He knew it wasn’t her. It wasn’t possible to be completely her. Ender had grown up with plenty of ghosts walking in and out of his bedroom to know that Clove wasn’t necessarily Clove…but she was still his, and he was forever hers. Yet she wasn’t looking at him.

“…C-Clove?” he whispered, too low to be heard. The waver in his voice broke the silence only for himself. Clove didn’t move. His entire world contained within that fragile frame kept still.

Ender furrowed his brows and his eyes dropped to the ground. When he lifted his eyes to her, she was gone. He stepped into the room and looked all around. He always liked playing games with him, ever since they were little kids. He used to get mad at her for never letting him win at hide and seek but she never made it any easier on him.

Hesitantly he slowly dropped to the floor, crossing his legs as he watched out the window to where her starless eyes were fixed upon.

“Clove…” he whispered into the air. “…Get out of where I can’t follow.”

 Ender had stayed there the entire day, the entire night, and the following morning. No matter the time, the light never hit him and he kept in the dark, in the quiet. He rose to his feet, bleary eyed as he brushed the dust off his jeans. He walked down the hall, back onto the stairs, and back to his bedroom.

Sombre. There was no other word for how Clove felt, how she moved, how she breathed as she made her way from the loneliest corner of the library and fell from dark to vacant in less than five seconds. Everything she did, she did with such sombreness that not even the brightest of things could pull her out from the deep waters she had been pulled under ever since her oath to Roncalli. If there was a way to swim to the surface, to suck-in a lungful of air, to find her toes digging their way against the soppy mud of the ground below, Clove didn’t know. She didn’t have time to know or to crawl her way to the shore. Ender was going to be killed. He was going to be killed unless she did absolutely everything Roncalli ordered her to and so far, she had done it all.

Clove had left herself defenseless, she had grovelled in the dirt at his feet, she had allowed him to touch her in a possessive way, and she allowed him one more order after the one she had to currently follow through.

Her fingers applied as much force as they could which was just enough to push open the doors to exit the library. She kept her head low as she walked and slipped her hands into the pocket of the baggy sweater she wore. It was warm and thick with Ender’s smell. It even still had his favourite guitar pick inside. She nimbly pulled at the strings that dangled from the sweater’s collar and breathed a shaky breath in.

It had only been an hour since she ran to the Owlery and sent along the largest owl she could find to deliver her letter to Ender. It was a short trip, literally from one tower of the castle to another, but she knew a larger owl would take longer to manoeuver its way between those tighter crevices to reach the window of the Seventh Year Gryffindor Boys’ Dormitory. Clove was really in no position to waste time, but she couldn’t help it. She hesitated as she tied the letter to the owl’s claw, she purposely picked the slower owl, and even now she hesitated as she made her way outside.

The sky was darker than usual and held the slightest ripple as hazy clouds passed over the glowing moon. It reminded her of how she felt, as though she was trapped under water, glancing up at the edge of the surface that was black and moving and held the slightest hint of sunlight rippling across like sun to a mirror, or flame to a wind. It felt a lot like she was stuck beneath, unable to breath, while everyone else moved about with oxygen in their lungs, free to breach the surface whenever they pleased. The shadows that fell upon her frame as she stood shivering upon the castle’s enormous steps were so dark, they looked almost blue.

She spotted Ender across the stretch at the nearest shore of the Black Lake, his frame lit by the fire he had started – the same fire he had started on many occasions as the two sat there together, year after year, once as acquaintances in her first year, to best friends from her second to fifth year, to now soulmates with a single promise to one another. Just then, she noticed somehow his mother’s ring felt cold and numbed her finger.

Sombre were the sounds of her footsteps as she took her first forward, then the next, then the next until she stood a few short feet behind his relaxed, unsuspecting form. She was close enough to spot how his bare feet were in the water, how his shoulders were calm, and his breaths were as good-natured as he always was. Yet there she stood with no other choice but to crumble him.

Clove knew there was simply not enough time. There was not enough time for her to stay on this earth, not enough time to think this through, not enough time to stop Roncalli’s torment upon her, not enough time to put-off what she had to do.

There was not enough time in this life to heal the damage she had sworn to inflict, but in the end, she’d rather spend the last of her time having Ender hate her than spending a second knowing he was murdered for her. Clove took in another breath before she closed the distance between her and him and knelt in the sand next to him. She knelt close to the fire and turned her face to watch the flames carnivorously lick the timber before she glanced out over the Black Lake, its still waters, and the moon that hung overhead. Between them was nothing but the fire and what felt like all the distance in the world. She turned her gaze and met his eyes and she felt her own tremble. The tears already stung.

There would never be enough time in the world to prepare her for what she was about to say – there just wasn’t time. She lowered her head and remained still, listening to the pops and cracks from the fire, the smell of ash thick in her lungs. Her hand moved sluggishly to the other as she slid off his mother’s ring and slowly met his eyes once more.