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T h e H o l l o w s   O f
H I R A E    T    H
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T h e E n d:
Denouement
Part Seven/Seven

And so fall away from happiness is what I did. But it turned out this bitter way: that was never the reality. This is the reality. This is my God forsaken life. All of this danger, this bloodshed, this pain—this is the reality.

And, in this reality, I can't escape my routes—what people before me have had to deal with. Just because of a stupid tale. These are the times where you realise, there is nothing humane about some of us humans. I resent them for what they've done to me. I resent them for what they've done to my life.

My blood denies me the reality I thought I had. I don't belong where I thought I did. With a reality worse than a nightmare, I wonder when I'll wake up. I can't breathe. All these uncovered lies are suffocating.

But the worst of all are all the problems built up in my life over the past five months. All the natural teenage drama, all those bumps in the road that made all the drops seem that much scarier. Carter was my best friend. He loved me. And I couldn't return that. I knew I couldn't. And now, I'm just as bad as those other monsters, creating downfalls after hazardous bumps in the road. What have I done?

I've hurt more people than I've helped. Every time I've been saved, someone else has suffered the damage. I'll warn you, please keep your distance. I am an explosive. I am a ticking time bomb. And the next time I explode, it won't just be one or two people falling, it'll be the whole city.

So I'm sorry. I'm sorry I hurt you, and your friends and your family. I swear I didn't mean to. I'll repay you however I can, just, please, let me heal.

This is going to be hard, I know. But I have no choice. Everywhere I go I get hurt, and then someone else gets hurt in the crossfire, and then someone gets hurt because of that. It's a domino effect I can't stop. I hope that this solves all our problems. I don't care where I go next, at this point, I'm not too sure where my home is anymore.
Is this the true meaning of Hiraeth?

—Sky Forest, twenty-four hours post reality.

I blinked. "What?" I was frozen. If anyone had walked past they would have questioned if I was a statue or not.

"Walk with me." Jameson proposed and I simply followed behind him numbly as he strode off.

"They were talking about it when I walked in." Jameson begun, "The guardian council took you too early, and that caused more damage than good, so to fix it, they're just going to send you back." He explained.

I scoffed, "What am I? A broken iPhone? Do they want a refund with that too?" I continued my jokes until Jameson gave me a sharp look.

"It's cleverly thought out, if you–"

"Clever? How on earth is this clever?" I interrupted, sounding disbelieved.

"The enemy won't be expecting you to be out in the open. This plan is the biggest secret this academy will ever keep. Those five guardians aren't allowed to whisper a word of this," Jameson explained, and for someone who seemed to love my company, he appeared to be speaking highly of this plan.

"So these other academy's around the world, they don't know anything?" I asked, still not capable of getting my head around this ludicrous plan.

"Of course not, the less people that know, the better." Jameson answered.

I nodded, "But you know." I countered.

"I'm your guardian, Sky," Jameson started as if I had lost all sense of sanity. "My job is to protect you; not to divulge your safety plan to the rest of the world." I stayed silent, waiting for his next comment.

"They think that the enemy will be completely oblivious to this," Jameson sighed.

I picked up on this. "But you think they won't be?" I asked, watching as Jameson stared at me.

"Yeah," His voice was quiet as our eyes met. Looking away, he continued, "There will be guardians hacking into government systems—all of the security cameras—so we get live updates of your wellbeing. Field guardians will have the task of checking in on you every month, discreetly, obviously." Jameson continued to inform me but I still didn't understand why any of this had to happen.

"But you're not a field guardian..?" I trailed off, watching as Jameson held the door open for me. Jameson tensed.

"No." He responded, waiting for me to enter the building. I did, and he followed.

"So I– when can I see you?" I asked him, almost stupidly. I desperately wanted a date and time in response.

Jameson ignored my pleading eyes. "Never."

I nearly tripped over my feet as I came to a standstill. Jameson turned around to see what the hold up was. His pained eyes met my pained eyes. And then I felt like crying again.

"I don't want to go home." My voice was small, yet sure and steady. Jameson frowned, appearing to do a double-take.

He took a few steps forward. No one was in the corridor. "But this is your home, your parents, your friends, your old life—it's all there, waiting for you, Sky." Jameson wasn't trying to intimidate me, he wasn't even trying to bully me into my final decision. Jameson was curious, but, ultimately, he didn't care about my parents, about my friends, or my old life; he wanted me to stay. I could see it in those glorious sapphire eyes.

"But my parents are never home. My friends—I won't have Saph, Cassie or Avery. I won't have Carter." The truth was out in the open, and I watched as Jameson winced when I mentioned Carter.

"But you have Alexi." Jameson argued and I found myself feeling flustered and lost for words.

I looked at his perfectly sculpted face. I wished I could stroke his beautifully soft hair. I recalled his velvet voice when he had last spoke. And I let my ocean blue eyes meet his sapphire blue ones. I knew he had killed Carter. But I still loved him.

"But I won't have you." I countered in a whisper. Jameson's lips parted, but before he had a chance to respond, someone interrupted him.

"Sky!" I jumped, tumbling into Jameson slightly—he caught me, of course. I turned, meeting the eyes of a man dressed in all white, as if I had the plague.

"I hope you'll excuse my appearance, could you follow me?" The man said nothing else before he swivelled around and lead Jameson and I somewhere I had never been before—and it required the use of passcodes and ID cards.

We eventually reached a small corridor, outside of a bigger, more sterile looking room. On a chair sat belongings I had seen before.

They were mine.

"We need to return you with the items that you came with—in the clothes you wore when you disappeared." The man told me but I couldn't let my eyes be torn away from symbols of my old life. My uniform. The earrings. My school bag. The shoes. My bloody iPhone. I just stared at.

The doctor passed me my clothes, even my underwear was there, and the same tights. "Go and change." He directed me to a bathroom down the hall but I didn't utter a word.

They were just items of clothes, but feeling them glide across my skin felt like knives of my past skimming across my bare flesh. Once on, the clothes didn't feel the same. I stared at myself in the mirror. Did I look the same? Did I feel the same?

I walked out and watched as Jameson took in my appearance first. Something flashed in his eyes, but then it was gone. Jameson handed me my bag, containing belongings that I didn't even recognise anymore. I refused to accept my phone, and let Jameson slip it into his back pocket.

We took a secret exit to the car park. I wouldn't even get to say goodbye to the girls. I wouldn't get to council Toby. I wouldn't be able to grow closer to Kai, or to witness Harry's eventual release. I'm just being shipped off.

We were about to get into the car when rowdy shouts sounded out from behind us. Jameson stepped to the side so that he stood in front of me, pressing me against the side of the door as we faced yet another threat. Guess who.

"I forgot to tell you!" She yelled, her handcuffs dropping to the floor as she charged over to us. "I was never your friend, Jameson!" Jameson stiffened. I clenched my jaw.

"I have evidence!" She shouted as guns were aimed at her.

"Bert." Was the only word that escaped her lips before Jameson pounced on her. But I yanked him back.

"What are you talking–"

Seeing the guardians approaching, she made her last plea for attention, "I taunted him; lead him to his suicide. I was jealous." Guardians forced cuffs onto her.

"I gave him the gun!" She screamed.

"He didn't let me down." Was the last thing we heard before she was stuffed into the back of a police car, of which sped off into the distance.

Eden had driven Bert to kill himself. Eden had killed Bert.

I put a hand on Jameson's shoulder. "She wants a reaction—one last victory."

Jameson turned to face me, "She never had a first victory." Then, he opened the car door for me.

Numbly, we slipped into the car, then we too sped off into the distance.

[There should be a GIF or video here. Update the app now to see it.]

"Sky?" I jumped, looking over at all the awaiting eyes. I hummed in response as Jameson frowned at me, a concerned expression evident on his face.

"So far we have three of our best field guardians out in the world to forge your kidnapping." The driver told me and I nodded. "Obviously you won't look as if you've been missing in a shed for five months, so we have people out there who can fake legal documents that say you do have signs of this."

The car stopped. We were in the middle of a forest.

"This is where we stop. We need to stay out of the way for this to work. There is one civilian here who could report the unusual behaviour here today." I couldn't absorb all of this information. I just stared out the window.

"In fact, around a month after you disappeared, the man living in that house reported the shed, that we are using to set up your false kidnapping, to be the place that you were being kept hostage. However," The driver, who I figured to be one of the deputy head guardians, told me, "Once the police found him to be mentally insane, and not taking his medication, they refused to waste their time searching this place." I found myself at a loss for words at the police force's lack of integrity.

The driver handed Jameson a rucksack. "Off you go." I sat there. The time has come. And I couldn't face up to it. Jameson nudged me and so I followed him out of the car.

We walked along a gravel path, the only sound we heard being the crunching of our feet.

"Before I go," I began. "I want to understand what happened with Carter; I want you to tell me what you did." Jameson didn't respond. "Because I don't believe for a second that you killed him out of cold blood."

Jameson exhaled, "An enemy fighter had a gun. We were immensely outnumbered in there and I was just trying to eliminate a bigger threat—most of the fighters had lost their guns in the turmoil; I was supposed to be the saving grace of the academy." He told me first and I let my hand grip his to offer him support. He didn't kill him out of cold blood, Sky.

"Carter was out of the way. Then he was in the way." Jameson tugged at my hand, pulling me to a stop just as we were about two metres away from the shed.

"I didn't mean to, Sky." It was hurting him. And I believed him. "It was an accident, I was trying to kill a bigger threat but then I killed your boyfriend and I–" Jameson lost it all and pulled me in for a heart-wrenching hug. He gripped onto my shoulders so tight that I thought he was going to break them in two when we pulled away.

We stared into each other's eyes.
I loved him.

"I forgive you." I whispered and Jameson did a double-take.

"No, you shouldn't. You should hate me, like you said you did." Jameson shook his head at me.

"Jameson," My voice broke. "I'm never going to see you again." I smiled, despite the fact that tears were streaming down my face.

Jameson couldn't hold my gaze as he watched my tears spill, and instead pulled me into the shed. Once the door was shut, another opened and showed us the pathways to our hearts.

We still loved each other.

Jameson smashed his lips into mine, then caught me as I nearly tumbled, winding his arms around my waist. He hoisted me up onto some sort of table in the shed, knocking over quite a few belongings. I threaded my fingers through his very-soft-to-even-admit hair and kissed him harder.

"I love you." Jameson would whisper between kisses and I nearly cried right then and there.

"You're so beautiful; I love you." Jameson kept whispering and I kept crying once we had pulled away. I jumped off the side and launched into him for a hug.

"Please don't leave me." I cried.
"I love you." Was my pathetic reason, but it made all the sense possible to my heart.

Jameson pulled away and led me over to a corner and began making it look like I had been here for a while. Together, we slashed my tights, we made my already dirty uniform, from the previous making out positions, even more dirty. My hair was already knotty; I hadn't brushed it since the previous night.

Jameson tied up my wrists, of which were already red with irritation from the ropes Eden had used, and then tied the rope to an object behind me. He then placed all of my valuables into his rucksack—this was our coverup. I watched him place my iPhone into the bag with a pang in my heart.

When Jameson was done, he held my face in his hands, his thumbs were dirty, and he was supposed to be smearing the dirt along my face. He glided his thumb along my cheekbone and I shivered.  My heart aches for him, and he hasn't even left yet.

Jameson kissed my forehead, like I had done to Carter. But this one was more sweet, but more bitter too.

"You're going home, Sky, you're going home."

Was the last thing he whispered before I saw him cry for the first time since I had met him. He tied cloth around my mouth, and then, after gazing into my eyes for what seemed like too short of a forever, he did the same over my vision.

Fingers ran through my hair, soothing me gently. Then the fingers were gone.

Footsteps were heard, trailing away from me. They stopped.

The shed door opened. Then the footsteps were gone.

He was gone.

[There should be a GIF or video here. Update the app now to see it.]

As an ache overwhelmed me, I began to hear Jameson's lasts words echo in my mind again.

"You're going home." He had said.

I was going home. But where is my home?

I no longer know where I belong. Home has proven to be people, not places. So when you tell me I'm going home, you can't be right. Because I know home; I know the people. And where you're taking me, none of those people are there.
That isn't my home.
And I'm scrambling around under a mass of mud—it's suffocating me as it fills up my lungs. Here I lay, crumpled at the bottom of a deep, dark pit of despair.
The meaning of The Hollows of Hiraeth?
My now hollow heart. Laying in a hollow, ripped from my chest, surrounded by broken memories. The depression of falling so deep into homesickness that your lungs constrict and your own blood "burns with the ferocity of a malicious mystery."

—Sky Forest, twenty-four hours post reality.

[There should be a GIF or video here. Update the app now to see it.]

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My name is HillyBillyFrog

#iliedaboutpostingonwednesday
#condemnme

The end bitches

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Gossip Girl

(Please don't kill me I'm not immortal okay bye)

-hi

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Next update: Saturyay
(sounds like a planet)
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CHAPTER oh wait

sorry

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