If you’re new here, check out the first instalment of Pathological here.

This one is short and sweet. Maybe the sweetest I’ll ever get out of our Starlight.

two

I’ll never forget the day Tala found me. I thought I’d found her at the time, but thinking about it now…well, it was meant to be.

She’d been sitting under a tree overhanging St. Mary’s River, long blonde curls cascading down her back and catching the sunlight in sparkles. She wore a long pink dress, strapless with an empire waist, the fabric pooling over her legs so just her toes peeked out.

I thought I was hallucinating at first. I wasn’t in the middle of nowhere, per se, all kinds of little towns dotting that section of Highway 7, but they were too far to walk between. There was no vehicle or bicycle around…not to mention those perfect toes, surely she didn’t walk barefoot from somewhere?

I couldn’t look away. If this was a hallucination I wanted to drink it in for as long as it lasted. The gentle curve of her cute nose, the dip below her cheekbone that looked like it would dimple if she smiled.

Then she turned her eyes on me, and it was like I was stripped bare.

People say that when Tala lays her hands on them with intent, it’s like she’s ripping their hearts out of their chests and baring their souls to the world. She can read their deepest desires and secrets and trauma and everything else, and she puts everything back in order so they’re Fixed, clean, fresh.

I don’t know what that feels like because she’s never done it to me.

But that first day when she looked at me, I think she read me, saw everything inside me, and I could feel it.

She patted the grass beside her and looked back to the water, inviting without inviting, and I went. I forgot that I’d been hitching in the direction of the city, hoping to bait someone into caring about me. Hoping it would be someone I could fuck, because it had been a while.

All of that stayed on the side of the highway as I made my way down to her and sat, breathing deep the scent of lilacs and lavender and some kind of spicy musk I couldn’t identify.

“I’m Tallulah,” she’d said. “We’re going to change the world, you and I.”

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