The fire burns bright in the hearth, a flickering ghoul of blue flame. My hand traces across the mantelpiece above. A soft layer of dust mists my fingertips. I look across the room to the girl across from me. She is short and wide but willowy at the same time, like a sturdy sapling. Outfitted in a buttery yellow cardigan and black jeans stretching up her thighs. She looks so painfully normal here I can almost pretend. I wipe the grime from my hand onto my jeans and turn. “Don’t get to cleaning up much, do you?” My voice wobbles as she comes closer. My sentence ends in a snap. “Who are you? Why are you in my house?” she asks. Her eyes burn like flash-paper, cherry-red lines tracking down her face. Her irises bleed with confused crimson, floating in the air around her. A halo of light. She curses softly to herself but I say nothing. Her gaze becomes more distressed. I recognize her. It. “Does it matter?” I breathe. She inspects me once more, gaze hesitant. The red tinges into more of a lighter, calmer orange. Her fingertips are glowing too, now. The color from her cuticles fills the air with the smell of gasoline. Thick, cloying, just how I remember it. “I suppose it doesn’t. How did you find me?” The hues get thicker and heavier. Distressed black creeps in the corners of her orange aura. I take a seat in the rocking chair, the one I know is hers, and watch her pupils contract. Ebony shadows ooze from her fingernails. Something akin to a smirk might have crossed my face because the black is awash with dark red again. Her confusion feels like an endowment. I clear my throat before answering. “You leave trails behind you. No matter how many times you erase my memory, I still follow the smell of gasoline.” The words hang in the air like storm clouds. She bites down on her bottom lip. There is determination sitting hard and heavy in her obsidian eyes. “Don’t try it again,” I order. “I’ve been here before, I know it. Why can’t you just hear me out for once?” She looks away, and I know I’ve won. Quickly, desperately, because I know my time is running out, I lean forward and balance my palms face up on my knees. She is looking at me curiously; her thick black ropes of hair obscure her painted face. I close my eyes and relish in the dreary darkness for a moment before I open them again. I will my soul up, up and through my nerves until I can feel warmth pulsing in my veins. I grit my teeth and push it through the soft pads of my fingers and through the birth creases on my palms and watch her face illuminate with the colors erupting from my hands. Reds, yellows, greens, blues, blacks. All with that scent of gasoline. I can’t hold it long. I blow out a breath and it dissipates. My hands feel like lead and I slump back against the chair, fatigue laying heavy on my eyelids. I force myself to look up at her. Tremors run through her body. I can hear her breathing in ragged pants. She looks at me and finally, I can see a tiny glimpse of her shining through the kaleidoscope. “Look what you’ve done to me,” I try to fill my words with venom, but my voice cracks and the hurt pools out. It’s dark and cold and icy against my tongue, throbbing with an opulent sapphire of sorrow. “I can feel it now. The colors. The same way you do. I can feel yours, too.” I reach my hand towards her. “You’re scared.” And indeed she is. The black grows darker and darker, until I feel like I am standing in the yawning night instead of the midday evening. Smoke is exuding from her hair now, twisting and curling up her collarbone. I can’t bring myself to hate her when she looks so pained. My voice grows softer. “I can’t forget you that easy, Alora.” The black aura around her freezes. Tinges of verdant hope expand from her neck. Like hope, like rot. She looks back at me and her eyes are wide and soft. “Did I mean so much to you?” she says quietly. More green spills from her eyes, rolling down her face in tears. “Then why do you keep on following me? I want nothing to do with you, but you come for me, time after time. Why?” “Because I…” my voice trails off. There is so much I want to say. “I can’t forget you,” I just repeat. She turns her back on me. She is still smothered in that jet-black. “Why?” she asks. Her voice is fragile. Melted, stained glass. I take her in once more. Her face is stained with the colors of our pasts. My voice trembles. “Please don’t leave me again. You’re all I have.” She blinks at me and I am awed by how innocent she can pretend to be. “I just want to be left alone,” she whispers, and my heart breaks. I get up quick, my head swirling. I won’t let her touch me again. “I remember, you know. When we first met.” Her smile is tinged with sadness, ultraviolet and soft. “In the library, right?” I look away. “You were looking for the book I was reading, and I gave it to you. Then you wouldn’t leave me alone.” She scoffs, and a bit of orange enters her expression again. “You followed me around like a lovesick puppy.” I grin at her. “Then you kissed me under the ivy. You nearly bit me.” She crosses her arms as a smile darts across her face. “I didn’t know how.” “All those books you used to read never helped you.” She looks down. I continue. “Then you showed me, didn’t you? This is the part I can never quite remember. You showed me and I-” “You looked at me like I hung the stars,” she said softly. “You told me you loved it. You told me I was beautiful.” “Then why are you running from me?” I plead, reaching forward. She backs away from me in an instant, gaze hardening. “It’s better for us if you don’t remember,” she says harshly. Black expands around her again like ink and I feel my breath quickening, as if my chest was rebelling against me. “This isn’t fair,” I plead. “How can I even begin when I don’t know what I did?” The black expands until my world is consumed with it. I clench my trembling fists. “You’re going to erase my memory again, anyways,” I snarl, and we both know it’s true. “Might as well get it off your chest.”. “We argued,” she says softly. “You started to shout at me. Then you got closer and I got scared. I hurt you. I broke you. I don’t want to do it again.” “So why not let me remember?” I beg. “I’m sorry I yelled, okay? I just want you back.” Her expression shutters and I know in an instant it was the wrong thing to say as the black flares an angry red. “I’m not something you can have.” “I never thought you were-” The red grows larger, all-encompassing. My breath catches in my throat. “You always wanted me to do things for you! Like a performer, a street animal-” “Alora,” I try to warn, but my voice is stuck in my throat. Blue curls throughout the red; like flames. “You always wanted something from me-” The red reaches forward and before I know it, I’m stumbling over my own feet and I’m on my back, breathing heavily as the light fades out suddenly. A cigarette blown out. My chest aches with phantom pain, and suddenly, I can imagine it. She blinks and tears are streaming down her face, dripping down like deep blue sapphires, like cold black ink. A sob of purple escapes her throat. I pull myself to my feet, my own blues making tiny whorls around my fingers. “You hurt me,” I whisper, finally digesting her words. “You hurt me really bad.” She gasps for breath, and I hold my arms tight to my chest. “Don’t you realize?” I ask, my tone biting. “You never stopped hurting me. All these games you played with me; some veiled attempts to get me out of your life. Have you ever considered what I want? If I want to forgive you or not?” The blue grows thicker and gasoline fills my nostrils. I bit my lip. I know it’s coming. I can see it, now. It’ll always end this way. Iteration and iteration until I can finally find the right thing to say; and then, even then, a decision on whether or not I can forgive the hurt away. It’s long and daunting and the idea of it steals the breath from my lungs, the idea of going through it again, but she is already reaching for me. I grab her palms before they can reach my head and hold her back, angry reds exploding from my hands in tiny streams, just to be swallowed in her clouds of blue. “Don’t-” I plead. “Please.” Her gaze is conflicted. “I don’t want to do this again,” my voice cracks. “I’ll find you, Alora. I’ll find you and I’ll forgive you every time and you erase my memory again and again, I’ll come back till the world stops turning. You can scream at me, shout at me. You can leave me. You can scorn me. I just don’t want to forget you.” Blue mists around us, and I realize too late. It’s beautiful, her sadness. It’s like waterfalls and cornflowers and sapphires. Just like her anger; candles and roses and rubies. The times she leaves me, the times she kisses me, they blur. Beautiful and cruel. Her gaze is soft. “I’m sorry.” Her hands touch my head and everything melts away.