Young Writers Society

Her eyes widened.

"Megara?" she repeated.

She stared at her for another moment, going eerily still as understanding dawned on her. She didn't think about how Megara knew her well enough to guess that it was her, or how her current crush looked like her past one.

She just darted over to Megara and pulled her into a hug.

"Thank God," she whispered. "I-I was so scared."

Megara stiffened at the sudden touch but forced herself to relax. To hug her back. And then she didn't want to let go.

"Why do you look like Rory?" she murmured, unaware that she was shaking. What kind of sick joke was this place? For them both to appear as someone the other killed, with no instructions, no clear path out. The beauty of this place only made it worse.

Runi instinctively rested her head on Megara's shoulder.

"I don't know," she admitted. Her grip on Megara tightened a little bit - like she was trying to prove to herself that Megara was really there. "I woke up in the flowers right before you did."

She could feel Megara shaking in her grasp. She wished she knew some way to calm her, but she barely knew how to calm herself.

"Whoever brought us here has a very cruel sense of irony," Runi declared, only for her eyes to widen in horror when she realized that she had said her declaration out loud. It was ironic because Megara looked like the woman she had loved for years, but Runi could never admit that.

Megara felt like she should laugh, but all she could do was tighten her grip on Runi. This embrace felt a lot like another. It might not have been the same person she held close, but it was the same body. The differences were clear, though. That one had been happy, followed by...something that wasn't going to happen now. That one had been between lovers.

Runi was a friend. Yes, they'd kissed before, but that was out of necessity. She wanted to get home, that was all.

"Yes, they do," Megara agreed.

Runi wiggled out of her grip and stepped back a few feet.

"It, er, is?" she asked. It was ironic for her, but she couldn't figure out why it was ironic for Megara.

Runi glanced down at herself, then back up at the woman standing a few feet away.

"...Who's Rory?" she hesitantly questioned. She wasn't sure she wanted to know the answer, but if they were going to be stuck here like this...

Megara stiffened again, her gaze dropped to the floor. The lines and swirls of the floorboards painted a picture beneath her of nothing in particular, which she seemed to find fascinating.

"Rory is...was, a friend. She...she was...I..." she shook her head. The tears had returned to the backs of her eyes with a vengeance. Her fingernails dug into her palms so hard she thought they may begin to bleed.

"Oh," Runi softly said.

Megara didn't need to outright say who Rory was for her to understand. She couldn't put all the pieces together, but she could put together enough of them to get why Megara was so choked up right now.

"Nissam was a friend, too," she whispered. "...But that was a long time ago..."

Megara pulled away and wrapped her arms around herself - not herself - whatever.

"Is that who..." she gestured vaguely at herself. She wanted her own body back. Why couldn't she have at least been taller? She could deal with the twigginess if it weren't for the fact that she was still far shorter than Rory...Runi. She shook her head, suddenly consumed by the urge to laugh, cry, something. This whole thing was ridiculous, once you got past the sadism of it all. They weren't themselves. They were copies of each other's past relationships, kills, both.

Was that why they'd been chosen for...whatever this was? They had both killed someone important to them?

Runi managed a nod.

"That's who you are right now," she confirmed. She didn't say anything else. She wasn't sure what else she was supposed to say. She could tell that Megara was as hurt by this turn of events as she was, but what where they supposed to do? They were the only people she had seen in this place.

Megara nodded and looked around. She considered sharing her theory but decided against it. Telling Runi about the worst thing she'd ever done wasn't the best way to reveal that she was a killer. If she could avoid it, Megara wouldn't reveal that at all.

"Why do you think we're here?" she asked instead.

Runi looked around at the cabin.

It looked vaguely romantic, but that couldn't be the trick, right? She glanced back at Megara. Megara hadn't brought it up, so either she hadn't noticed or didn't want to notice...

"Last time we kissed and got out of the dance," she said. "Maybe this is something like that?"

Megara tried to stop the blush to no avail.

"What do you mean?" she managed, looking at the floor. Good gods, she was acting ridiculous. Like a little kid discussing the concept of kissing her crush.

You are thinking about kissing your crush, reasoned a voice at the back of her head, which she decided to name 'Briar' to make it easier to ignore. She wasn't going to Kiss Runi again. She wasn't going to get attached and ruin...whatever it is they had.

Runi took a deep breath.

How hard would it be to avoid revealing how she felt about Megara?

"It's a little, uh..." she faltered, resorting to gesturing around at the cabin in the hopes that Megara would get what she was trying to describe. "...romantic in here? The cabin's really cute, there's only one bed, the forest is beautiful and the flower field would have been really calming if we had known it was each other back there."

Another deep breath.

Shifting uncomfortably, Runi raised a hand up to rub the back of her neck.

"Andwebothlooklikeeachother'scrushes," she got out in one, single breath.

Megara blushed. She didn't know what was worse, the concept of confirming to Runi that she and Rory had been much, much more than each other's crushes, or telling her an entirely other truth.

She swallowed the lump in her throat and kept her gaze pinned firmly to the floor. She didn't want to look up, at Runi, at Rory.

'Runi' was an anagram for 'ruin', she noticed in a bid to distract herself. That made it worse.

"We look like people each other have killed," she said quietly, not completely aware she was saying it.

She shifted uncomfortably.

She didn't like to talk about her past that much. She never really got the chance to. Cornyx was her only and best friend, and he had been there when everything went down with Nissam. He knew her story as well as she knew it. But Megara didn't know it, and part of her was scared of how Megara would react.

She took a hesitant, unsteady breath.

"Nissam wasn't just someone I killed," she admitted. "I...I loved her. We were best friends. She fell in love with someone else, but that's not why she's dead. We made a magical pact - it seemed like a great idea at the time, right? We were the best of friends, and we both loved magic, so we thought it would be cool to make it something more magically official."

Her gaze dropped down to the ground, and her hand fell down to the side.

"...But then she got corrupted by an artifact," she quietly said. "And her husband, too. And I-I loved Nissam, but she wasn't the same anymore. She corrupted our bond, too, and made it so I had to serve her. It was my mistake, so I just...let her do it. But then my friend Cornyx came along, and she wanted to hurt him, so we killed her together - saving his life and freeing mine."

She slowly looked up at Megara.

"I've never been in a relationship," she admitted. "The closest thing I had to one was Nissam. And I...I see the way you're looking at me right now. Rory wasn't just a friend, was she? And she wasn't just someone that you killed. You really loved her, just like I still can't stop loving Nissam even now."