LIFE - Chapter Two (Flashback Segment)

Writer's Note: This is a segment of text taken from Chapter Two: "Lie Down With Your Demons" of our Novel "LIFE". The central characters in the scene are Reece and Tikea. This scene is actually a flashback within a flashback, thus, without the rest of the chapter it may seem to lack context - however, Matt and I are looking more for feedback on readability and flow than actual plot at this stage.

Chapter Two - "Lie Down With Your Demons" - Flashback Sequence
Written by A.J. Charlton

                He remembers a day that was warm and serene, where he was lying in a beautiful field in the hills outside of Elmsford. A field that seemed to stretch beyond the infinity of the horizon. Taknil, the second sun, was high in the sky and shone its crisp white light over the whole of Oceania. A flock of small dragon birds skimmed the clouds, which were fluffy and sporadic. The birds had wings as long as their bodies, and scales the most ruby of red. Their formation was perfect, as they followed the leader with choreographed co-ordination into the distance.
         He held them in his gaze for a second.
         “Aren’t they magnificent?” he said, tilting his head to the right. Beside him, buried deep in the grass, whose blades, though few and far between, must have each been the size of a small child, lay Tikea, a girl, with a light tan, young, though slightly older than he, and very pretty, who sported a ponytail and wore a cap on her head and a wonderful white dress on her body. She smiled the most heart-melting of smiles in his direction; her teeth white and perfect, her eyes brown and soft, glimmering in the white light that Taknil bolted across the planet.
         “I could lie here all day,” she said, before she started to giggle.
         “Uh-huh,” he responded. He started to giggle a bit too, just because she was.
         She twiddled her fingers through her fair hair, then looked over to him; “You have mud on your cheeks, by the way” she laughed. “You look like my dad after he’s finished on the farm!”
         He blushed, then rubbed his cheeks firmly with his shirt.
         She started to laugh again, “Don’t use your shirt! Your mother’ll have you!” she said. She reached over shyly; “Here, let me…”
         He blushed some more as she gently wiped the mud off his face with a tissue. Her touch was enough to give him goose bumps. He felt a warm fuzz all across his body. He could smell her perfume as she got near, it smelt like a concoction of all of the most passionate flowers in Eronil. He made eye contact with her briefly, but he didn’t dare hold on to it, his eyes scurrying away quickly back up to the sky.
         “There, now you look adorable!”
         And again, he blushed. He couldn’t even imagine how red he was at that moment. Tikea said he looked adorable! He felt so flushed and hot. He wrapped his hands together uncomfortably across his stomach; not least because he wanted to quell the feeling of internal butterflies that was developing within, but also because he didn’t quite know where to put himself.  There was a cut on top of his left wrist, through which a small dash of blood tried to squirm. Tikea caught sight of it.
         “Look at your wrist…” she said softly, with an air of genuine concern. He lifted up his head and did as she asked.
         “It’s just a cut,” he responded nonchalantly, holding it in her direction. “Think it was off a bush back in the forest…”
         She leaned over and touched it gently, wiping away the blood.
         “Mean bush…” she said with a smile. “ Is it sore? Maybe you should go see the doctor, get some ointment put on it incase it gets infected?”
         “It’ll be okay…”
         “If it gets infected your arm might drop off! That’s what happened to Tim McNarm, according to my dad…”
         He wanted to laugh -“Tim McNarm’s Only Got One Arm” was a fictional poem by Michael D. Moore -- one of his favorite poems, in fact - but he held it in. “It’s just a small cut, Tikea, I’ll be fine! But thanks…”
         Tikea’s face softened and she lay back down. She tilted her head and looked over to him with a warm smile. She always smiled. That’s what he liked about her.
         “I love this place,” she said conversationally, “it’s so tranquil and quiet… I used to come here alone and just lie down for hours, watching the clouds pass.” she started to giggle again, “I used to think that if I stared at them long enough and really squinted my eyes, I could make them disappear.”
         He looked at her briefly, then looked back up to the sky; “Maybe we can…” he said.
         “Maybe we can what?”
         “Make them disappear… If we really try hard enough.”
         She looked at him and giggled some more.
         “I’m serious!” he laughed, “let’s try it… If we do it together at the same time, it might work.”
         “Well we can try, I suppose!” she said excitedly, her eyes shining even brighter than before. “Which one?”
         He looked up. There wasn’t a lot of choice.
         “That one!” he said, pointing to the biggest cloud in the sky.
         “That one? But it’s massive…”
         “Exactly! If we make a big one disappear just like that,” he gestured with a  click of his fingers, “we’ll know it was really us who did it! And then we’ll know that there‘s nothing we can‘t do together.”
         She stopped giggling and looked over to him, trying to meet his eyes, but they wouldn’t reciprocate. She looked back to the cloud and smiled again.
         “It looks a bit like a love heart,” she said. “I’m not sure I want it to disappear…”
         He looked over to her and she looked back again, and for the first time he managed to hold her eyes for more than a few seconds. This time, it was her who broke the gaze timidly, as she looked back at the cloud.
         “Maybe,” she said, “instead of making it disappear, we should try to… absorb.. its energy and share it between us…”
         “Okay then…” he responded. “Let’s try it.”
         They both looked up at the cloud and squinted for all they were worth. A light breeze developed, swaying the grass from side to side. At first, he tried to visualize the cloud being covered over by the sky, somewhat like the sea washes over the sand.
         “How long do we do it for?” he asked after a minute or two.
         Tikea, her mind focused, didn’t respond.
         The visualization wasn’t working, so he tried a different approach. He tried to feel the cloud’s energy being pulled into his body, as if he was sucking it in through his heart. He could definitely feel something when he did this, but the cloud was still there. In fact, it might have even got bigger.
         Then the dragon birds glided past the cloud, interrupting his focus. He looked over to Tikea, who was still squinting just as hard as before. Suddenly, the wind got heavier, and it blew something into the side of his face. He grabbed at it with his hand and moved it into sight..
         “Tikea,” he said… “Tikea!”
         “What?!“ she asked impatiently, as she turned and looked at him, somewhat dazzled.
         “This is for you… A gift from the gods!”
         Tikea’s eyes lit up.
         “Oh my…” she said, blushing, “A purple freesia -- my mother’s favorite flower.  My favorite flower… I haven’t seen one of these in years… Its beautiful.”
         She leaned over, closer, as he lay still. The breeze settled. The dragon birds broke into a peaceful song in the sky above. She put one hand onto his chin gently. The butterflies in his stomach returned. His nose twitched. The scent of her perfume was overwhelming. He could feel her breath against his skin. He held her gaze. Her eyes were so deep and amazing. She looked at him in a way that he had never seen before. Her fringe blew against his face, tickling him lightly. She moved her face closer. Her perfume grew stronger. His heartbeat grew louder. Her eyes grew wider. His breathing grew faster. Her lips moved closer, and in a moment of sheer perfection, she kissed him gently on the cheek, and an energy wave bolted through his body, causing him to emit a shallow shudder. “Thank you,” she whispered. Then she pulled back and looked into his eyes and smiled shyly. They both blushed. She took his hand in hers and held it tightly, and then, lying next to one another, they looked into each others eyes and talked, smiled, and giggled for what must have been hours.

         Up above, the blue through which the dragon birds flew was empty. There wasn‘t a single cloud in the sky. But neither of them noticed…