The Space Between Worlds (The Space Between Worlds #1)

by Micaiah Johnson

We danced around each other for years because neither would tell the other the truth. If I keep quiet, she’ll walk out, and we’ll spend whatever time I have left navigating around each other like ships and icebergs. All because neither of us is brave enough to show our throat first.

But then I see pictures of shamans in trances and dancers in drum circles and children sleeping and I know she’s never been alone. She’s never needed us. There have always been those who transcend, and traversing is just one way to walk between worlds. I don’t think she’ll miss me, that’s too limited a way of thinking, but she makes me feel like she’s noticed me, and I am grateful for that too.

I’m always on the fortieth floor because that is where you are. I will always want to be wherever you are.”

Most important, I learn that you can love someone so much and so thoroughly it chases away even thoughts of death.

There was a time when the thought of ending up in the same desert I came from was the worst possible fate, but now I am comforted by it. Being beaten to death on the same sand that raised my sister, that made me enough of a fighter to get me here, it feels like coming home. If it’s good enough for Jean, it’s good enough for me.

maybe it isn’t one of those quick corporate deaths, like the factory accidents from long hours and lax safety protocols, maybe it’s one of the slow corporate deaths, like that dust that settled in our grandparents’ lungs until there wasn’t room enough for air.

Fighting means there is something worth fighting over.

He’s dying, and with the time he has left he will ensure he lives forever.