🧚 away we go, to fairyland ☆ junie/jj bb (round 2)

The Demise of Junie St. James. 

Inside of her lungs, the sand bursts into flames. The fire is a friendly sort; a furnace that promises warmth. Junie should know better than to trust something so fickle, though. It does not keep its promises. 

She is glad to rest; glad to give up on the version of herself that had to rip out girls' throats with her teeth. On her back, she lies and looks up at the rafters, lets the beat of the Headliners turn to liquid around her. She swims in it, and the fairy dust turns her golden, a sand-angel with makeup-stained cheeks and tangled hair. It is not unlike the feeling she gets when she makes herself sink below the surface of the water, holds her breath, is, temporarily, a visitor in another world. 

At home, her family crowds around the television set and gazes upon her. They do not understand what is happening; they do not realise that the spice has gotten in, that Junie is being carried away with the same faeries that offered her to them as a babe. They think she is hurting, dying. Her sister bites her nails to the quick. 

Junie is not in pain, not anymore. The injuries she sustained at Sofia's hand have been muted by the precious sand. Her body comes to life again as though touched by a magic hand. Junie wonders if that is what having a mother is like.

"I feel better," she says, to her companion from Seven, and to herself. "Everything is okay now, JJ."

In the living room, her Father is brought to his feet with relief. His little girl is okay. Perhaps she will still come home, after all this, a stranger though she is. (She always was.) 

Junie is very slow in getting to her feet. There is no rush, after all. She does not explain what she is doing, feels no urge to ask for permission. She has spotted a way up into the bright, spacious rafters of the backstage; she climbs steadily, straddles the beam, grins down at JJ. 

JJ is not herself; she, too, must have breathed in too much. Her brow creases. 

"Come on, JJ,' Junie urges. She reaches out her hand, an offering. "Come with me."

JJ takes it, joins her there. 

"Isn't it beautiful, from up here?" Junie whispers, looking across the stage. Below them is the wreckage of the day. Dead bodies lie scattered on the floorboards, slumped in pools of blood. A couple of figures on the far side stagger toward one another, in the final stages of a desperate battle. Directly below Junie, somebody's arm is strewn, detached from the body to which it once belonged. JJ does not point this out. 

"Don't jump, Junie," she whispers instead, as though reading the smaller girl's mind. 

At this, Junie laughs. The sound is strange. It echoes around the rafters, bouncing back and forth. "I never told you this," she says, setting her eyes on JJ with the serious conviction of a small child telling a secret. "But they found me in the forest. They thought maybe I was a fairy. I didn't believe that, not really."

Carefully, she gets to her feet, until she is balancing on the beam itself, a bloodied ballerina in first position. 

"I think I understand everything, now." 

"Don't do it, Junie." Her voice is weak, as though she does not believe it herself. 

"You know we won't fall, don't you?" her eyes sparkle. 

With her small, cold hand, she takes JJ's, and they stand together for a moment. 

At home, her brother slams the door on his way out of the room. He cannot watch, cannot bare to see it happen. 

"I've always wanted to fly," Junie says. She looks at JJ, struggling to focus her eyes, but determined to see. "Do you trust me?" 

The sand breaks its promise, then, as it was always going to. The magic inside Junie is strong, but misplaced; she steps from the beam, full of fairy dust and hope. JJ jumps alongside her. 

The camera watches as they arc into the air. For a moment it almost seems as though she is right, and that they will lift and float and soar together, escape this place, come home. Her sister catches herself hoping in the second before they hit the ground. 

[Everything was okay, after all.]