After a few kilometers, they crossed the white-brick road into the area with the sandstone buildings and cobblestone streets. The sound of the boy’s chewing flooded the silence between them that had grown more apparent when they’d left the nightlife of the province behind them.

Lara admired the hanging baskets filled with fresh flowers of red, yellow, and pink. The empty and well-spaced streets severely contrasted the crammed cluster of construction they’d left behind. She was walking slower, allowing the beauty of peace to resonate within her, when she noticed the chewing had stopped.

Lara looked down to find the boy peering back up at her, his eyes sparkling like orbs. In his palm he grasped the skewer, now stained by grease where meat once clung.

“Are you done?” Lara asked, receiving a nod. “Would you like the other one?” She was met with another nod. Lara smiled, offering the boy a trade: the stick for the full skewer the stall-keeper had given her before they’d departed. In agreement, she squatted to make the exchange. But before they could begin on again, she heard a tiny voice.

“Thank you.”

Lara froze, ogling his face. “Oh, so you speak.”

He nodded.

“Why didn’t you talk earlier?”

He only looked down at his food.

She raised an eyebrow, but continued on undeterred. “No more nodding, okay?”

The boy halted his head mid-nod, “Okay.”

The two came to a divergence in their path, a small set of stairs descending to their left, and an upwards incline of the path to their right.

“This feels like North, right?” Lara convinced herself, out-loud, as she took the stairs down to their left.

Refocusing on her interrogation at hand she added, “How did you manage to get all the way out here?”

He shrugged. “Papa said he said he would play before he got busy. And he always says it but then he doesn’t and forgets about me.”

Lara withheld her surprise at just how much had come out of his mouth for fear of silencing him. “So, were you supposed to play out here or… did you,” she wondered if a child that small understood the concept of running away, realizing that she, herself, was ironically engaging in the same thing. “Run away?”

He sulked, peering down at his shoes and nodded.

She looked up, regarding the path as they walked. “I guess I kind of ran away, too.”

“Really?!” He exclaimed, the brightness resurging in his voice.

Lara allowed a smile and agreed.

“We’re running away together!” He concluded with childish carelessness.

“We can always go back though,” she added.

The sound of rushing water had grown substantially, and when they exited the alley they encountered a barren marketplace. A river rushed past a few feet away from where they stood in the clearing. The stall-keeper had called it the Noremi.

She regarded the bridge that crossed over the river a few miles away from where they’d ended up.

“Do you know if we should take that?”

He crouched down, holding the skewer between his knees with the pointy-end aimed directly at his chin while he worked at pulling the piece of meat off of the stick and ripping it in two. “That’s where the train goes. Sometimes papa uses the train for work.”

“That’s not very safe,” she commented, referencing the skewer that threatened to impale him at the slightest mistake.

“I’m hungry!” He exclaimed as he handed her a piece of the meat chunk he’d ripped in half, completely ignoring the focus of her concern.

“That’s quite kind of you, but let me take this so that I can put your half back on, okay?” She said, disregarding their travel worries as she pulled the skewer from his cradled position.

“Let me put this one back on for you and I’ll take the half you want to give me,” Lara instructed, holding out her hand.

The little boy returned her smile, unfurling his hand in hers. The tips of his fingers made contact with her palm.

And she felt the sensation of fire searing through her skin.

Lara could see the flames, clear as day about her, the sun blinding her though it had just been night. Even still, she could faintly see the stars above them as she screeched through the agony. Somewhere, she wasn’t sure where, she heard a crowd pulse and throb with angry voices – fueled by a thirst for blood.

Then, with a hard thud, there was a sudden pain – more real than the fiery mirage. An ache shot down the side of her body where she’d fallen to the cobblestone.

Yet in her mind’s eye the strange vision continued to blind her, trapping her in a fire while the shouts of the crowd beneath the stake cheered on. Through the two realities, a sharp sting pierced her skull, and newfound clarity flooded her mind.

The world flashed from the fire to a classroom with only two desks, thick mahogany expertly polished to reflect the light bouncing off of the Victorian molding along the wall. Those same moldings curved into a whiskey-colored arch above the vertical chalkboard in the front of the room. In an instant, hundreds of conversations between her and another smaller girl burst into her recollection, like flood through a dam. Outside the classroom sped the scene of her, and a boy with a muddy-brown fringe, in the shadowy corner of the catwalk. From it sprawled a grand staircase leading to a foyer where glorious English windows spanned the height of the room. The visages of people, busy with their duties appeared and disappeared just as quickly as they traversed the mansion around her.

The childish screams of playful games bounced up and down the corridors as she and the other, younger girl chased one another past the beautiful chestnut railings. And once more, she was with the young man, his fringe hanging over his eyes as he leaned over her, her back against the wall in the corner of the hall, provoking a longing she hadn’t realized slumbered within her. The sensation of his hand on her face began to fade into fuzziness as he leaned in, and Lara drifted away just as his lips touched hers.

A wailing filled her ears as the plum-colored sky twinkled clearly above her, unobscured by the images that had filled her mind. Her screams died down as she came-to, her throat aching with the grit of sandpaper.

She froze, afraid to move until her pulse softened back into the ease of reality.

Lara assessed the scene around her until she was confident enough to push herself up off the cobblestone. With her head pounding mercilessly, she centered on the frightened and confused yowls of the boy beside her.

She’d barely addressed his distress when her ears took note of a foreign fluttering she’d never heard before. It amplified while her eyes darted around the number of lit windows from the residences around them which she realized had previously sat darkened.

Lara hoarsely tried to calm the boy’s cries until a fluorescent light flashed on a small distance away, shooting straight to their location.

More forceful winds swooped at Lara’s hair, forcing her to squint as she tried to make out the figure sliding down the ladder that had unfurled from the floating machine. The person hit the ground and approached the pair, shouting something.

“Knox!”

“Stand down,” commanded a voice from the source of the light above them.

Lara shielded her eyes with a hand and struggled to make out the words muffled by the swooping blades.

The child beside her sniffled, wiping at his wet face. “Papa?”

He got up, waddling to the center of the spotlight just as the figure crossed the threshold.

His hazel eyes flashed with the reflection of the light, tie and suit jacket flailing with the winds. Albeit the shadow of a missed shave lining his jaw, he looked as if he’d barely aged since the kiss on the catwalk.

A flood of memories rushed through her, trampling one another into a haziness, but still clearer than they’d ever been before. Lara’s heart caught in her throat, unable to address him and watched his eyes drift towards her.

His brows furrowed as she saw his lips mutter her name with the same disbelief.

Shakily, she stood, the beating blades in the sky seemingly slowing to match every pump of her heart.

“Don’t shoot!” Lara heard him shout just as she noticed a red dot light up on her collarbone. She’d just barely managed to dart out of range when she heard the whizzing sound of a bullet.

She barreled around the corner and back up the alley from which she and the boy, Knox, had come, the sound of footsteps trailing some distance behind her. She pin-wheeled right at the fork and up the steps they hadn’t taken, unable to think straight.

Why are you running?! Her mind yelled like a hostage to itself. Stop running!

It’s too late for that now, you already ran.

They shot at me!

He told them not to, it was an accident.

How do you know for sure--

Adrenaline dulled the sensation of whatever she’d collided with as she fell backwards. She’d barely manage to swipe away the hair obstructing her vision when she saw a surprised soldier reposition his aim directly at her.

“Sir, I have the target--” he shouted shakily into a small black ball by his cheek.

“Please, I didn’t mean to,” Lara startled as her attempt to get up was met with the sound of a gunshot hitting the wall behind her.

Lara’s hands shot up instinctively in defense as she shut her lids in fear.

Silence.

When the second shot took too long to sound off, she opened her eyes.

A small stream of blood snaked from his nose and into the air, slowly traveling towards her. His limbs were rigid, and the rifle barely hung in his unmoving grasp as though he was unwillingly frozen.

Lara’s gasped, just noticing the shape of her breath in the air when a frigid cold overtook her.

Charcoal wisps of smoke snaked into a figure behind the restricted soldier.

Her eyes widened, barely making out the shape when the soldier fell to the ground.

She jumped, momentarily distracted by the unconscious body crumpled before her. Her eyes darted back up, searching for the figure.

But it was gone.

As the winds strengthened above her, a fluorescent light locked on to her position once more. A chorus of footsteps clamored closer from both ends of the street and a minefield of red dots crawled onto her chest.

“Miss Lara,” called a pointed voice whose body emerged from the group of soldiers ahead of her. His steel-colored blazer flapped about in the wind, though his slicked-back blonde hair remained cemented in place.

The man from Indianapolis stepped into the ring of light, single-handedly buttoning his blazer.

She felt a pinch in her neck as he stopped in front of her. When she brought her hand up to the location of the pain, she felt a small circular object attached to her skin. It propagated a numbness that she could feel quickly spreading through her body.

With a sharp smile, he crouched down. “It appears we’ve found you.”

The last of his words echoed in her ears as she succumbed to the lightheadedness, and her vision went black.