Dwindle

  ***

  We were going to make good time. I knew that it would be mere days before we reached the drop point, and I felt more and more ecstatic with each day. I felt that I had finally won at something, though I wasn’t sure at what. I felt that I was doing something right, that I had accomplished something.

  Ellie spoke little but to ask questions, but I knew she always listened when we talked. Sometimes I forgot that she was there and felt a sense that something was missing. I would turn around and she would bump into me and wake from her imagination – whatever it was that was in there. I wanted to know when I couldn’t sleep for the noises around us, and I always dwelled on it when there was something close to fear in my stomach. I thought of Fisher and her mind and her dreams and I drew warmth from there.

  Fisher was sad and lonely and didn’t like being prisoner to us though. And I felt awful for making her that way – all the time wondering why I felt awful, if I should, whether or not I should apologize…and then I recalled that I was finally, for the first time, saving her life instead of the other way around. And I liked it.