Hearts on Fire

Daniel and Michelle both walk into a spiderweb, even while walking one in front of the other, with her huddled behind him. It was supposed to be a simple hike through the woods, but the sun had sat well before they made it back to their cabin.

Daniel’s eyes are closed, and he’s spitting. “It’s in my mouth,” he complains

Michelle’s hair is out of its holder, and she keeps jerking and pulling away from imagined things crawling on her. She combs her fingers through her hair repeatedly and continues to dust off things that aren’t there.

“Ugh,” Michelle groans. “Why did you let me walk into that?”

Daniel runs his palm down his face, then over his hair. “It’s not like I could see the thing. Besides, I thought you were behind me. How did you even walk into it?”

Michelle opens her mouth to speak when a glowing butterfly passes between them. The pastel colors of its wings flap with no discernible body connecting them as glittering dust falls in its wake. Her eyes follow the glitter which leads her to looking down at her feet. Her frantic steps had caused splashes of pastel colors, alternating blue, green, orange, red as she danced away from the web that had encroached on her personal space.

Michelle walks backwards while watching her steps erupt in yellow, purple, then she backs into a tree and turns to see another eruption of color.

Daniel walks up beside her as she’s raising her hands to cover her mouth. “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore,” he says.

She spins back to him. “What’s happening? Are we hallucinating?”

“If you’re also seeing a splash of blue on the tree you just backed into, I’d say this is something other than a hallucination.”

Michelle twirls, each of her steps splashing in a different color. She giggles and runs to a nearby tree, drums on it, then continues her solo onto the other trees nearby. “It’s amazing,” she says, grinning uncontrollably.

Another butterfly takes flight and Michelle looks back to see each of her footsteps pooling and rising off the ground. It’s like they were drops of water that had fallen and splashed but are now rewinding. The drops of color ascend into the air, change into animated wings and fly upward, their glow illuminating the surrounding area.

Michelle’s hands go over her mouth once again, and her eyes go wide, allowing the colors to reflect off of them.

Daniel traces his finger down the trunk of a tree. His finger passes in several loops and arching shapes where a rainbow colored rose soon takes shape. He adds some leaves to the initial stem, then leans forward and blows across the flower’s pedals. Dust moves away from the pedals like the excess that remains when you’re using chalk on a sidewalk.

The flower shifts in an invisible wind, and he reaches, wrapping his fingers around the stem to pull it away. When he turns back with the flower, a gentle dust if falling from the pedals, glittering in their descent. Michelle’s hands are still over her mouth when he proffers the flower. One hand remains over her mouth but the other moves to cover her heart as her eyes fix on Daniel.

“Is this some kind of proposal?” she asks, behind her cupped hand.

“Something like that,” Daniel admits, looking down at the flower. “What would you think about living in a place like this?”

Michelle looks up as the butterflies pass through the treetop canopy and their light, causing the shadows to move as it shines through gaps in the foliage. “I don’t know what you’re asking, but this place… it’s magic.”

Daniel reaches down, takes her hand and closes it around the flowers stem before walking over to her tree-drum. He taps one color and then drags it away from the others, sequentially separating each of them. “You always wanted me to take you home. You wanted to meet the parents, but it’s not that I didn’t want to. My story’s just a little more complicated than you’d probably want to believe.”

Daniel had pulled the separated colors back together and formed a rainbow colored unicorn. He leans towards it and blows. The colorful dust continues to trail off of it as it turns to look at him, then whinnys and gallops across the air.

The unicorn moves over to Michelle, then runs laps around her as she turns to follow it. “The truth is,” Daniel continues, “I’m not from your world. You know the bear attack that you so fervently cited as a reason for us not to come on this trip? Well, those two campers losing their life was actually my fault.”

Michelle gasps. “Are you actually a bear?”

“What? No, of course not. Why would you think such a crazy thing?”

Michelle’s stare becomes flat as she holds out her upturned palm where the unicorn continues to trot in a circle above it. “I’m sort of suspending my belief about how the world works at the moment.”

“Oh,” he says, with a nod. “That’s fair. But this is actually where I’m from, and it’s all I’ve ever known until the day I visited your world. My world is amazing, but it’s also lonely with no one to share it with. Those that I bring here only enjoy it for the night, then don’t remember once they’re gone. After losing those two to that bear, I realized I couldn’t stay in your world any longer and that their deaths were on my hands. You’ll be safe here for the night, but you’ll have to go back in the morning.”

The unicorn’s stage falls away as Michelle lowers her hand back to her side. She looks at the flower, then back at the unicorn. It looks back at her curiously, as if to question why she interrupted its performance. Her gaze then turns back to Daniel, and she walks over to him, reaches for his hand and grips it. “You didn’t bring me here to say goodbye. We came so that you could ask me to stay.”

Michelle presses her chest against his. She turns her gaze upward, compensating for the extra foot of height that he has on her, and meets his eyes. “And if I stay?”

Daniel smiles. “We’d look out for them together, giving them a magical place to stay for the night and letting them go home once the sun is up.”

Michelle turns her head to lay her ear against his chest. The unicorn is there, looking back at her and wondering why it’s no longer getting attention. She closes her eyes, just listening to the thump-thump sounds of a very human heart. “Just let me have tonight to think about it.”

“Yeah,” Daniel agrees, then lays his cheek against the top of her head.