Mingled skins.
The taste  of burnt chips.
Hand in hand.
Shoulder to shoulder.

Light flickering in the room; only source of it visible- the candle.
Burning, flickering, not too bright, not too dim, in the middle of the room.
On the mahogany table.
Next to the star globe he got from her on their anniversary.

Of course, his gift is on her fingers.
The left hand, she likes it there.
Interlocked with his right hand, she looks at it.

She looks at it even as stays there, beside him.
She wonders, then hopes and then chides herself for being too foolish.

‘I must not get my hopes up.’

He kisses the top of her head.
He breathes the smell of her in- she smells salty.

‘From the running, no doubt. The sweat’

They just stole the coordinates to a worm hole.

And even as he and she both look at it, beyond the mahogany table with the flickering candle, against the wall; they feel only a sense of foreboding.

Like burnt dreams- very much unlike the burnt chips they just had (her fault, of course).

Because burnt dreams are very unlike the taste of burnt chips.
Setting fire to your own life, your own castles in the skies, pieces of heaven,

All for momentary if not rare or happenstance drops of ambrosia for the present.

But the petrichor can already be smelt and the dread of what’s about to happen is settling in.

They are giving up on their own lives to provide meaning to the false sense of security they’re being given- because it’s what they believe in. To die aware if not ignorant, because being aware can only make them united.

That’s what they hope.

‘I must not get my hopes up.’

Even amidst all the horror they are feeling, she continues to feel as if it’ll somehow all work out.
They’ll make it through the night.
Hell, he could even stay.

Or could he?

‘I must not get my hopes up.’

Finally he speaks-

“Funny that it’s a scroll- don’t you think?”

She looks up at the kindly face that says those words.
She breathes in how utterly silly that face looks, and she loves it, and yet she feels tormented.

She wants to push him away immediately because it’s dangerous to get any closer, but they already have.
She wants to drop her defenses and love him fully, with all her might, but she has already experienced pain and wishes she didn’t know the meaning of fear.

But she does.
All she feels - her hopes soaring dangerously and her heart welling up with dangerous, foolish love and she feels herself slipping down, down the rabbit hole.

“Yes.”
Is all she manages.
And then she looks up and tries to smile,
but ends up making an awkward face,

And says,

“You better make it back, Hugo. Even if it’s for one moment or one infinitesimal part of a second, you must make it back.”

He looks at her in surprise.

“Because although loving you is a complicated, dangerous business, I’d rather see you again than die having lost you forever.”

He smiles.
“That makes little sense.”

“I just want you back, you hear me?”

“Loud and clear.”

“Now go.”

The star globe suddenly brightened and the candle stopped flickering.
He got up.

They looked at each other.

They sniffed the petrichor that was so saddening, they parted their skin like it was so traumatizing.

And it could have taken a nuclear reaction to separate them barely a few days ago- with their friends cracking jokes about how the world would come to an end if they ‘broke up’- and how funny it was that now, the world would if they didn’t.

Not break up, but part.

And they parted.

He picked up the scroll containing the coordinates, and vanished.

It was unprecedented but it had the desired effect.

She burst out spilling salty water from her eyes which humans call tears- I call it the epitome of suppression.

Because even as she cried,

‘I must not get my hopes up.’

And that was the end of everything.
Or so she believed.