Personal Narrative-Sacrifice

I didn't need to do this. I needed to find food and shelter so I could survive… but was it too much to just have a bit of normalcy? If only for a bit? We’d won, Scion was dead, was it too much to ask for a bit of… I tried to think back. When had I just had a moment where it wasn't necessary to plan, or prepare for something, or think about fighting, or worry about the apocalypse?

I stopped running my fingers through my hair. I couldn't remember. Back in Brockton, surely, but… before Leviathan? Before the locker? Before Emma turned against me? Before mom died? When, though?

...Summer camp?

Slipping my glasses back on I looked around the dry stream bed and listened to the brook flow and burble over the rocks while the trees creaked in the wind and the birds sang. …show more content…
A fat possum scurried through the bush a few hundred feet away and the moment was gone.

Except for my powers. Except for what I was getting my swarm— from my passenger.

I pushed back at the sensory input until the senses of my swarm dulled. Then I kept pushing and pushing and my range shrank. I brought it closer, and closer, and closer, and closer… until it was only me. The swarm was still there, of course, it would never really disappear, but it was muted and distant enough that I could pretend it wasn't there for a moment.

Closing my eyes I slowly breathed in, smelling the clean, uncontaminated air; the wet rocks peeking up from the brook; the water flowing; the loamy scent of damp earth and… A bit of ozone? I opened my eyes to stare up at the slivers of sky between the branches and leaves overhead.

Still clear, but maybe there were thunderheads I couldn't see?

A bush shifted at the edge of my range, but I automatically quashed the sensory information from my swarm even