Crystals floated around her and her skin sparkled in the light. I could see diamond tears covering her cheeks; she knew as well as I did that, we wouldn’t survive this. At least I had found her. She wandered too far on accident. But the entrance was blocked by rumbles of thick ice and snow. the only way out was up but no one would be coming back for us. We would die together. Without thinking, I wrap my arms around her Icey body, lying on the snow-covered ground. I hoped to give her some warmth but it's futile. My body is just as cold as hers, trembling against each other. "I'm s-s-sorry." she barely whispered into my ear. "I shouldn't have left my curiosity get the better of me." "I'd rather die with y-you than live withou-out you." I replied, squeezing her with the little strength I had left in my freezing bones. More snowflakes continue to float down, coating her hair in them. "you're beautiful." I blurted out unexpectedly, I even surprised myself. But it was true. Even while we slowly freeze to death she still looks as gorgeous, like a graceful ice sculptor. She must be too cold to answer because she only rests her head against my chest, then she softly closed her eyes. In a quick, rushed whisper I told her one last thing, not sure if she could still hear me.

"I-I love you-u." Then, I follow suite and close my eyes, expecting no reply back...

"Love...yo-you." She whispered it so softly I almost missed it. Her stuttered words were enough to warm my freezing heart, making the coldness not so bad as I blanked out...

Crystals floated around her and her skin sparkled in the light. I could see diamond tears covering her cheeks; she knew as well as I did that we wouldn’t survive this. The refractions hadn’t been in our favour this time, nor the stars up in the sky that shine bright. There’s no hope in surviving a world that has been broken by chemicals in the atmosphere, turning everything to stone what it touches upon.

I touch her cheeks to wipe away her tears, as if I am telling her, _this isn’t the end. _“Just close your eyes,” I say and this time she doesn’t question, she does it because there are only mere moments left. “What do you see?”

“There’s you,” Ella says, “and me dancing in the rain. It’s dark outside, and there’s a full moon.”

“What do you feel?” I ask.

“Happy,” she replies and there is a smile creeping upon her face before she opens her eyes once again. They are filled with diamonds, daggers that will suddenly fall against her will and it will hurt. “I won’t be feeling that again.”

“You will.”

“How’d you know?” I don’t, I’m just pretending so that you can feel rested before the world consumes us in the darkness and the rumble. __ __ “I’m looking into a crystal and it shows a better future. We’re married, we have kids, a mansion with the library you have always wanted.” I say the things she wants to hear, hoping that it’s doing the job of calming her down.

She touches my hand that still remains on her cheek, and it’s electric. The diamonds and crystals shine around us like we have defeated it - the invasion of sparkles. But really they soak through our skin, dissolving into our blood system taking us to the underworld. This is our last moment, our last breath. Then I kiss her, as the last taste upon my lips. They taste of cherry and suddenly she stops.

I watch as the diamonds and crystals take her away from me. My greatest enemy. They surround her as they lift her into the sky; I couldn’t help myself but cry. These tears are also made of diamonds, they dig into my sensitive face leaving wounds to remind me of the invasion of sparkles, and how they took everything from me.

Crystals floated around her and her skin sparkled in the light. I could see the diamond tears covering her cheeks; she knew as well as I did that we wouldn't survive this. The refraction hadn't been in our favor this time. It's true great power comes with a cost, and this time it was becoming human jewels. When we first met I knew we were going to get into big trouble. Not just regular detention trouble, more like falling off a cliff trouble. When we found out that we could travel to different universes with these crystal rocks, we started using them like crazy. We didn't know the cost. Every time we teleported, the crystals turned into a little of us. Now we weren't in control. We were gone. This was my fault. Helen, a voice in my head whispered. _You can take the refraction from your… girlfriend. Just don't get lost, or you'll be less than a crystal. Be safe. _Then I was falling from the sky. I didn't feel like falling, but flying. I had always been afraid of heights but this was amazing. I pushed my fears, flew to the sun, and waved at it. Then I kissed the sky. I felt like I could do anything. So I held the sun in my hand. Then my vision blurred. I was on a couch, holding a cup of hot cocoa. Eve sat beside me. “Hey, I want to show you something.” I ran to a cliff. I put her hand in mine. “Are we going to jump?” she said in a shaky voice. “If you do then you might just kiss the sky,” then she nods, smiling warmly. Then we jump. It still feels like flying. Then we fly to the sun, the winds helping us. Then we kiss the sky. She holds me tightly. “Thank you,” she says quietly. Then we kiss. We evaporate. The refraction had mercy. Now I can fly again. I'm not afraid. Are you?

HardCoreWriter- When I wrote this I was listening to the song Kiss the Sky from The Wild Robot, and that's where most of the story came from. When I finished the story I almost forgot this was a story, not a movie. I almost wrote credits for it. Anyway, before this gets too long I want to update y'all on something. Ghost Girl Pt2 may be longer than most of my writing, cause I've thought of a big idea for it. Have a great day/night! ♡

I reached towards her.

"You know you won't be able to communicate with anyone through these walls."

She lets the crystals fall discarded at her side. A failed attempt to contact our team. The early collapse of the north wall leaves us trapped under the wreckage and running out of air. I know our team is looking for us. I know they're spending a large amount of our remaining resources looking for their lieutenant and their sargent rather than securing the headway we made on the walls. I looked over at her again. Sargent Lisa Mae Boyd had never looked more terrified.

"Do you think they'll find us?"

"Yeah."

I don't have the heart to tell her the truth. Not now, not like this. Not when I know outside we're so close to winning.

Time travel is a joke. Time is now and has always been a one-way street, a mighty torrent of eons and milliseconds barreling forward in one direction. To even think you can reverse time is horse feathers.

On the other hand light travel is a whole different bailiwick. Light bounces. It reflects and refracts and gets downright wibbly wobbly. And at some point, a really bright pointdexter figured out how to skip along light beams, allowing light rocket ships to go back and forth in time.

The hows and whys of light skipping are above my pay grade. The bright boys and girls know the mechanics of the miracles. They do the research. Hynde and I just pilot the light rocket ship. Or at least we did until we died.

As you can imagine it takes a helleva lot of energy for the eggheads to light skip back and forth to not step on butterflies and watch those goofy aliens build Stonehenge. I don’t watch the news but Hynde told me the big wigs and the mucky-mucks were always jabbering about the ROI of light travel scientific research.

Hynde said that one of the nerds had come up with the bright idea of stealing unused energy from the past to fuel the future. Yeah, apparently the geniuses of the 20th century were always losing nuclear warheads.

Hynde explained it like nine-eleven time to me but her explanations of lost payloads and downed airplanes just gave me a tension headache. How could you lose a nuclear weapon once let alone ten times? The twentieth century must have been bananas. Long story short, instead of just transporting squints on our good ship Jemison we were picking up fallen arrows.

We plucked a Fat Man, 30 kiloton nuke out of the Pacific. Next we snagged two 4 megaton thermonuclear cores, easy peasy. But three wasn’t the charm. We messed up off the Georgie coast. Well I messed up. Hynde and I always stay with the Jemison, while the smart guys explore. They get all the fun. I wanted to explore an itty bitty bit. You see I’ve always had this thing about pirates. I know get your yucks out now. But I just like the idea of treasure and adventure on the high seas. I just wanted to see a real life lighthouse.

I swear it was just a peek. The lighthouse was rad. Black and white checked, the restored structure was picture postcard perfect. I skipped down took a couple of selfies and skipped back. Or at least I tried. A little boy saw just me. I saw him too just as the paradox ice started to form. Half in phase, half out, I was frozen on the refractor. Hynde was pixelated. Her angry face faceted thousands of times. Doctors Biddle and Obanyo were shadows and my beautiful ship Jemison was Fibonacciing into oblivion.

So this is how we die? I thought. Would the light poison pollute time travel to the point we never exist. What if I was supposed to see that boy and he was supposed to see me and his descendents discover the very technology we need to visit the past.

This was my last thought when something kicked me in the groin and I shattered in a jumble of shards.

“Quit it or so help me Ant next time I will leave you dead for good,” Hynde growled and headed for the bridge.

Obanyo shook her head at me and Biddle gave me the finger. Leaving the refraction deck, I apologized to the geeks with a shrug. What can I say? Sorry not sorry. Light bounces, time is one way street, and lighthouses are way cool.

Crystals floated around her and her skin sparkled in the light. I could see diamond tears covering her cheeks; she knew as well as I did that we wouldn’t survive this. The refractions hadn’t been in our favor this time.

It was a risk we ran, mirror traveling throughout realm, yet up to this point, we always outran them. Although we'd never say it out loud, we thought we were invincible. Mission after mission, we made it. Sometimes we were a little worse for wear, but we always lived to tell our tales.

Not this time though. This time, we traveled right into a trap laid out for us by the very entity we had spent our careers, our lives, trying to take down. Our stepping through the portal into the room planted with a sea of glass, mirrors, and jewels trigged an explosion that sent a wave of shards crashing toward us.

In the breath, the split second, after the explosion, the whole world slowed to a crawl. My head snapped to where I knew she was at my side. If this was going to be my last moment, I knew I wanted to spend it looking at her.

Her eyes were brimming with love - for me, for our work, for our life - and I knew for sure the same love was reflected in mine. It was far from easy and at times, certainly not glamorous. Our luck was bound to catch up to us, I suppose. But we had a hell of a run. We paved the way for so many other agents and missions in the fight to create the realm we wanted for us and for our future. I knew without a doubt that our team would carry on where we left off, and I was already so proud of them. And in this moment, surrounded by both my end and my reason, I was at peace. It was all more than worth it, I decided, as the split second ended and the world sped back up.

I was enveloped by glass, pain, and then darkness.

Crystals floated around her and her skin sparkled in the night Luminous, a beating beacon of energy, shining so bright I could see the diamond teers, covering all of her cheeks As I stood there, in disbelief, of her absolutely mindboggling and inexplicable mystique

Shard flew everywhere, in slow motion it seemed. It was so much easier before. I wished she never had kids and I wish she was never with that guy, Samuel.

I reached up and wiped away her tears with a shaking smile, and I pushed away the pain in my lower abdomen where a dagger had pierced in through.

“Don’t cry,” I said softly as I brushed her brunette hair away and the thick forest around us darkened, and thunder in the sky. I knew it was Viola and Zae going at it.

She leaned into my hand and sobbed, but she did not dare touch me as her wings shivered behind her. I closed my eyes and brought her close to me, and I rested my head on top of her head.

“Drop the act.”

“Thought you’d never ask.” She grinned shoving me away and I just stared at her blankly because ever since King fed her noticeable lies she grasped onto it like diamonds, and it disgusted me deeply when she pushed this dagger through me.

She offered me her hand and I took it without hesitation.

The diamond glass littered our bodies as we lay sprawled on the concrete.

Our blood flowing together into a nearby drain.

I should have done more, but I couldn’t protect her.

I couldn’t even protect myself.

How can I protect her from something I couldn’t see coming?

They say accidents happen, with the kind of flippancy we’re all just expected to accept.

I can’t accept death. I’m not ready to go.

But like they say death doesn’t discriminate.

Old, young, we’re all going to die.

That always terrified me. The knowledge of knowing that one day I am going to die.

I assumed it would be when I was old. In my sleep, next to my wife, peaceful.

Or perhaps something quick that I wouldn’t even notice.

Not like this.

Not in pain, not slowly, my biggest fear realised.

And that’s not even the part that sucks the most!

She has to go through it with me.

Why?

WHY?!

This isn’t fair! God if you are listening, please the this suffering. Release us from this pain. I’ve never prayed to you before, but I am now.

I may not be able to open my mouth, but I am manifesting your comforting light.

They say when you die you go into the light, but I know that’s not true. Eternal darkness awaits me. It awaits us and I’ve never been more scared.