like the moon in the arms of the sky. juliet.

So this is how I die.

In pieces.

She forces my head underwater and in my panic, I float away for a moment. Peaceful, despite the chaos. Somewhere above I can hear Walter screaming, a soft, muffled sound underneath the rush of bubbles that leave my throat. My own screams are silent - and then I roar, pulled up to the surface to gasp and be plunged back into the icy waters I once craved.

I writhe, screaming bloody murder.

"GET OFF OF ME YOU CRAZY BITCH-"

Squirming and rolling onto my side, I grasp at anything I can and find her hair - yanking at the back of it with everything I have. The movement gives me half a second to throw her away from me, turn onto my side, gasp as the pain shoots through my abdomen and reach out to grab my last javelin.

I pull it upwards, but nothing moves. My eyes glance down, gasping, and see it still lying on the riverbed bank with my hand clasped around it. In half a second I blink, realise she's cut off my arm, and I howl as the wound explodes.

"Y-" heave, gasp in air, try not to pass out. "You crazy..."

Walter yelps, begging them to stop, but his pleads are useless. I can see the malice in her eyes and I understand it. Whole, in pieces, she doesn't care. Whatever I did to this girl she won't stop until I'm dead.

Neither will I.

"NO MORE!" I scream, guttural, begging for it to stop. The world sways, and the rain starts to pour, loose strands of jagged hair scrappy in my eyes.

I'm dying. I'm really dying this time.

Tears spill and mix with the water and rain, a hoarse moan overtaking me. Everything hurts. I am weighted down by the knowledge that these are my last moments, but I feel light as air at the same time.

It is a strange realisation, knowing you're about to die. Not like the third day, when I had the energy to fight and scream and tear the mutt's gits out. Not even at the first fight when my legs gave out and all I could do was sit and wait for my end. This is a hollow, awful feeling. I think of Jaime, and Noah, and Mom, and how furious I am at them - and how much I want them all here with me.

Mom and Dad and Jamie and Noah and Eli and Sid and Bailey and Justin and Saoirse. I deserve that. I deserve them here, with me, in death.

But I guess I don't get what I deserve in this life.

I bend down on to my last knee, shaking with the shallowness of my breaths, trying not to show how much I'm crying. My teeth chatter, I'm dying I'm dying I'm dying. Even grasping my last javelin takes everything in me. The point slips forward and the flame extinguishes as I wobble forwards, backwards, and drag my head up to meet their gazes.

I want them to look at me as I die.

"No more," I command - it's not a cry for mercy this time. An arched, shaking arm, I pull back and demand it.

I lunge - it sails wide, flops lazily into the water. And his own spear lands right in my core.

We are mirror images. He, on the second day. I, right in this moment. Except his weapon has soared through my stomach and out of my back, lethal.

Oh.

I gasp and choke on its invasion, coughing up the sour sting of blood. Down I go, into the water, watching myself fall like a ghost. Jamie Jamie Jamie Jamie Jamie Jamie, I just want Jamie.

But he's not here. Not even his ghost. Not even his voice in the back of my head.

And that hurts the most, even as I yank the spear out of my body with a great gasp and it tumbles with me into the water. How lonely I am when I die - that is what really kills me.

There's blood, so much blood, it gurgles and floods every concave of my body. In my stomach, in my head, in my throat. Pouring out where my leg used to be, the absense of my arm now a slow death. In my lungs and in my wounds it spills and gasps and flows into the river and my heart aches - for my life, for the fight I could not win, for my family.

("Noah Monaghan!")

When I think of her, safe, I smile.
And as I go, I think I was worth it.

I think.

I-

◈◈◈

When I resurface the river runs wild.

It's dark here. Bouncing up and down between the raging waves, I break the surface and see stars split apart by lightning - then another wave breaks against my back and back under I go.

A great white globe hangs in the midnight sky and its light dances against the waves, calling me upwards. I kick with my feet and find air, scraping my hair from my eyes to get a better look at the world.

A moon, the biggest I have ever seen, illuminates the sky behind me. It engulfs this place - and I feel every pull and push of the waves. As I go down, I go up, a dance. I learn to master it, soon no longer needing to struggle against the sea. I simply think of moving and the waves nudge me forwards, carried to the shore of an island underneath dancing stars.

It's an effort of the soul, fighting something deep within me for hours and hours and days and week and months and years and centuries and yet it feels like mere minutes. Eventually something gives and I find myself crumpled onto the sand, heaving in the cool night air tinged with salt and laughter.

"Well I'll be damned," the laughter has a voice. "Sam's gonna be pissed."

In an instant my head snaps upwards, spinning left and right. I am alone on this island - but I'm... not. It's just myself and the moon and the stars in the lightning-streaked sky, but the moon whispers something only I can hear and pulls my vision to the shore.

Two figures, a tall boy and a blue-eyed girl, stand on the snow-dusted shore. Miles and miles away - yet I can hear and see them as if they were right in front of me.

"W-who are you?" I say and the world around my island shakes a little.

"Not your island!" the boy replies. "I'm Quill. This is Wynter," he introduces, nudging the girl at his side who sends me a soft smile. "And that island you're sitting on, that's Sam's. She's not here right now."

A raven flits around my head playfully, swooping toward the sand and skitting back up toward the moon with a slight nudge of its wings. It mocks me, almost - I decide to distrust it.

"Who's Sam?" I ask cautiously, not questioning the madness of speaking to a boy across an ocean.

The boy, Quill, laughs under his breath, "She turns up here from time to time. You don't want to mess with her. But I am surprised you're able to sit over there."

The raven glides across the sand again, never touching the ground, and skims against the surface of the now calm waters in the moonlight. It lands next to Quill's ear, his arm wrapped playfully around the dark-haired girl's own shoulders. Wynter, I remember. She smiles back at my thoughts.

"Why?" I query, suddenly very aware of all the questions I am asking. Everything makes sense - but it also doesn't. I don't know where I am. It feels right, in a way, but why that is I cannot tell.

"No-one's ever made it to the island before. In fact," he cocks his head to the side and squints, "I don't think we've ever had a sky like this."

At that, I turn to look at the great big moon behind me and gasp. I feel it. The way it commands the sea. Tells it to calm, orders it to rage and storm, with every thought it changes from choppy waters to a surface of glass.

I sigh, and moonlight seems to ripple across the world.

Someone scurries from the flower-bedded forest, a tiny girl with beady eyes and hair as short as mine. "Aw man!" she grumbles. "I thought I had the biggest thing here! No fair!"

"Slate!" Quill grins, craning his neck to look at the smaller girl. "Thought we were the only two here."

"Naw," she muses. "I think I'm the last one. Who's the new one? She had to fight Sam for the island or what?"

"I'm Jules," I reply - but that doesn't seem right. Half of a name. I squint up at the mountain behind the forest and assume it is Slates. The moon tells me so, and then my name.

"Juliet," that feels right. "My name is Juliet."

◈◈◈

"So what are we going to do about this moon, Juliet?"

"What do you mean?" I ask, after the waves swept me calmly to the shore to join the others. This world feels empty. I feel empty. Like I don't quite understand everything yet. As if the world isn't quite right. It's missing something.

Quill sits to my left, Wynter to my right, and Slate across from me. She mutters to the other girl occasionally under her breath, things too low for my ears to hear. Wynter smiles or scoffs or nudges her friend. The scar on her neck tells me she probably can't speak, and I wonder why that is.

"Well," Quill explains with a frown, "there's usually a lot more of us. And there's always been Tiger's sun-"

"Who's Tiger?" I ask, desperate to understand why I'm here and what I did to get here. Slate said she was the same, a million questions, and that the answers would come with time. At that the sand seemed to shift and dance underneath us, a sort of welcoming murmur I can't quite hear.

"She was one of the first, I think," says Quill. "Brought the sun. But if you're here, she can't be. Always the first to go when the storms kick up."

My soul shifts, sinking.

"So the moon is... mine?"

"Yep," pipes up Slate. "Like how the mountain is mine, and the snow is Wynter's, and the flowers are Lace's and the trees are Rowan's and this whole place is Aria's-"

I spin, lurching violently in my place, suddenly aware of all the things around me. The moonlight dims, ebbing and flowing as the waves kick up their protest once more.

"Careful," warns Quill. "Last time that happened Sam actually showed up."

"Is that... a bad thing?" I ask, pulling my knees up to my chest to rest my forehead on their peak.

"No," he replies. "Sam's cool. Just usually means there's trouble to be had when she's about."

Wynter shoots him a look, furrowed brows and tight-lipped. Quill raises his hands up in protest - "I said usually, Wyn! Not my world, I'm just telling it how it is."

She relaxes a little then, tense shoulders folding back into a slump.

"Didn't show when I turned up..." Slate moped quietly, trailing off to glance at the island in the middle of the sea.

It takes a moment to collect myself, allowing the information to fill me up slowly instead of all at once. They speak of a little girl called Scarlett and the storm she brought, traces of it still sealed in the sky as lightning. Aria, the first one, the one who this place was made for. How if they close their eyes and let go they can hear the ticking of a clock, see a spark explode into everything and anything. It all makes sense, and yet it doesn't, and I feel a deep longing - or shame - to right the wrong I had brought.

"Not saying the moon's a bad thing," said Quill after a while. "I kind of like the night. Us three - well, four - the newest bunch in and endless night. But if we can be here, that means something. And if the others can't, well, that means something too."

"How many more are there?" I inquire - perhaps it's why I feel so empty, their absense.

"Seven," answers Slate. "It's weird that Aria's not here, though."

A new voice answers from the forest. "Is that so?"

All four of our heads turn from the shore to find an ancient, bare-footed girl emerging from the trees. Aria, I feel it before it's said to me.

She smiles and joins us on the sand. "Hello Juliet. You've caused quite a conundrum, haven't you?"

I can only blink, drinking her in. She is everything. And yet she's just a girl, like me. Her voice is a thousand years old but her face says otherwise. Incredible. The world seems a little easier already, just with her presence.

"No matter," she responds for me. "I've dealt with far worse things than a full moon. I'll just need your help getting someone back first..."

Then she closes her eyes.

◈◈◈

When the moon tilts and arches toward the earth I fall with it, swallowed by the sand. When I open my eyes there's a girl standing with me in the dark, wild yellow hair and freckles and a frightened look on her face. 

"H-hello?" she calls out, shaky and weak, cheeks sullen and exhausted.

I did this, I think solemnly. Something inside of me sinks.

"I-I don't know where- well I do, but I've only been here for a moment before," she continues, staring at me as she tries to decipher who I am. "They always find me again. But I've been here for...."

Hours, her lips curl around the start of the word. It doesn't feel right. I understand that all too well, not knowing how long you've been in a strange place/

"Who are you?" she finally asks, voice becoming braver.

"Jule-," no. "Juliet," I correct.

"Huh," the girl replies, wrapping her hands defensively around her freckled arms. "I've never seen you before."

"Likewise," I grin sheepishly, trying to recall the faces and names of those I swear I spoke with just before. My turn to frown. "What's your name?"

The girl pauses for a moment, as if scared to reveal hers. Like it was the last thing she had left that she knew to be true.

"I'm-"

A rumbling. The girl squeaks and buckles over, resting her palms on her legs as this dark, cold place shakes. 

"I can't hold on for much longer," she explains after a few gulps of air, and I swear her eyes flicker in and out of focus like a fading light. 

"What do you mean?" I ask, growing scared with every moment that passes. This place feels familiar and foreign all at once. Like a punishment, but one I placed on someone else.

More shaking. The ground begins to collapse.

"What did I do?!"

And my hand flies to my mouth, for I feel the truth of what I've said and it horrifies me.

She looks at me, wide-eyed and shaking something furious as the ground below her continues to disintegrate.

"What did you bring Juliet?!" she cries. "What did you bring?!"

"Bring? What-?"

As she slips into the abyss my hand instinctively reaches out to grab her - 

and when we break the surface once more the sun and the moon twist and sit in the middle of a bright blue, star-littered sky, and Tiger's hand is in mine.

Tiger.

Juliet, she thinks back.

Seven new stars hang around the moon in the sky. We lay with our backs to the sandy shore, heaving and gasping for air, and then we begin to laugh.

Eventually we stand, pulling each-other up as we glance at the sky and the impossible existence of us both. I feel her light against my moon, the way it fills this place up with warmth, how it glistens across a calm sea that pulls and pushes to my bidding. She feels the tug of the moon and gasps, sunlight bouncing across the water, and we laugh again.

Impossible girls. And yet-

We don't need words. We just feel each other, giddy and sensible, separate and yet whole. Twin spirits. Something about that feels right. Like I'm home.

On cue, nine more children emerge from the forest and Aria smiles.

"Go say hello, Juliet."

I smile back and turn my head to the trees.

◈◈◈