I was exhausted from over-alertness by the time Jem and Emma returned, but the powers-that-be had at least heard my begging. Not even a raccoon had stirred in the village while my friends were away.

"Your parents sent you this," said Jem, slinging me a bag. I caught it with a grunt and opened it to find all my favourite party leftovers, wrapped in cooking leaves and neatly frozen. My mother had even found a way to send soup. Buried deeper were two pairs of socks and underwear, a bar of soap, and a small, wood-corked bottle of honey.

I repacked the bag and slung it over my shoulder. "Did people say anything?"

"We only told a few what actually happened. Your parents both said to tell you they love you. Your mom refused to say goodbye. Apparently you have to find a cure and come back to tell her yourself."

That was a sharp reminder of just how much I loved my mother. Somehow, her stubbornness made this feel a little more manageable. We'd find a cure. We had to.

I wasn't the only one with supplies. Emma's new pack was suspiciously large, and I suspected it held a lot more honey than mine did. Elías was notorious for tucking gifts into every hidden pocket you didn't know a bag could have. To be fair, Rodolfo usually supplied at least half of them. Jem had only the bag he had left with, restocked but not filled any further. His father believed in frugality, and in leaving for the village what his children did not need. For a scout as talented as his son, "need" was a high bar.

We stayed the night in the town and set out as soon as it was light enough to see the ground in front of us. I was tempted to pull out one of my many new snacks, but I knew I would enjoy them more when we'd been living on bushfood for a few days. Nobody spoke much as we found our collective rhythm and followed Emma's pendant south.

Walking gave me plenty of time to think, plan, and worry about wherever we were going. I would not have called myself a worrier, but I swung through every shade of anxiety so many times in our first hour, I was ready for a nap by lunchtime. If the circumstances of our trip had been less dire, I would have enjoyed it. We were going further from Grillo Negro than I'd been in my life, in pursuit of something I didn't understand and maybe never would. I knew only one thing for sure: it wouldn't be like the village.

I could handle it if it wasn't like the village. I pounded that thought into my mind until I could start to believe it again.

I took to walking with my gloves off. Any heat on my palms was enough to make my heart pound like a hand drum as the horizon reeled across my vision. We had no idea how long these tattoo seals would last, and the fact that we knew nothing about this new Emma only highlighted that.

Or maybe Emma's powers weren't so new after all? She had always shown strange affinities for things nobody had taught her, from the birds that flocked to her hand to the fires she could light in even the worst weather. She said she just asked the wood to burn. And then there was her knowledge of plants, her ability to identify any fungus as toxic or edible, and her unmatched understanding of animals. She'd been found playing with a coywolf pup, for gods' sakes. At two years old.

Collective anxiety drove us onwards at a steady pace, despite the sense of adventure that I forced, Emma reveled in, and only Jem didn't seem to share. Emma laughed and fed birds and dug up roots she somehow knew we could eat. Between that and my foraging, we usually had everything but game on our hands when a meal rolled around. By the third night, I missed my family's tent. It was cold out, but the latter half of winter eased its grip as we trekked south—five days, then ten. The plateau's eastern mountains advanced until we were scrambling through foothills.

Emma's pendant now glowed so brightly, the turquoise faded almost to white. It was warm all the time. We made camp on the rolling landscape for what felt like one last time. Jem disappeared to find firewood. I dropped my bag and started on dinner to distract myself from the feeling.

"Oh, look!" cried Emma.

There was a flash in the sky. An orange spark drew a tail across the clouds: a thread of light that lingered even when its source was gone. Emma laughed, and I cracked a smile for the first time all day. Shooting stars were a thing of stories now, but now and again one made it through the clouds. Most considered them good luck.

"I feel better about tomorrow now," said Emma, rolled up in her bedfurs. I made her come help with the food.

There was a nervous energy thick in the air when we got up the next morning. Nobody could stomach much food, so I pulled out the last of my roasted crickets and shared them around as we broke camp.

"It's beating," said Jem.

In the low light of dawn, Emma's pendant-glow had begun a faint, steady pulse. She barely looked at it now. I watched its rhythm as an unpleasant prickle crept up my arms. Was it matching her heartbeat? If this magic turned out to be sinister, I wanted it as far from Emma as it could get. We were here for me. I didn't want my friends caught up in whatever came next.

We walked farther into the foothills as the mountains reared. Even the wind quailed in their shadow. I had to fight down my instincts as we passed the shell of a village nestled at the mountain's feet. Fuego couldn't hurt us anymore. At least, not from outside. Emma marched right through the village, and we found ourselves on a path snaking up the mountain. Jem and I slowed as the crumbled ground took its toll on weary feet and sore muscles. We were the only ones who seemed to feel tired.

The path became a trail, which narrowed until we had to walk single file. Then it disappeared. Emma kept going. I was about to beg for a rest break when we edged past a steep rock face and came face to face with a cave. 

I could have sworn it hadn't been there a moment ago. It was three times Jem's height, and almost perfectly round. Its stone throat extended into darkness.

"In there," said Emma.

She didn't need to say it. Mixed signals wafted off this place and hit my whole body at once, like the scents of food and tallow pots boiling too close together. Something reeled me in and something else repelled me. I wanted to enter, and I wanted to run.

Jem's face was impassive. "So, are we going?"

"You can't feel it?" I said.

"You can?" said Emma. She had lost her confident edge.

I just nodded.

Natural caves were one thing Fuego didn't travel along. A cave passage to the underground farms had saved Grillo Negro's founders. And here was a path from a village leading to another one.

But that didn't explain the feeling.

I could see the cave ceiling in the glow of Emma's pendant. My mind imagined sound onto the light's now-powerful pulse, though the beat itself was silent. Emma held out her hand to me. I took it. With Jem in tow, we stepped together into the cave.

The first thing I noticed was the silence. Even in a tent at midnight during winter's dark underbelly, I had never experienced silence like this. It had presence. It was like its own living thing, that fed on sound and swallowed every breath and footstep until I nearly talked out loud just to hear myself think. Emma gripped my hand tighter as the rocks sharpened. The path reappeared. It wound down into the earth until I was certain we would start finding mountain organs just around the corner. We walked for an hour. Then another one.

I was glad now that I was wearing coywolf fur. The air was as cold as midwinter, despite the unsettling lack of snow. Jem behind us was first to notice when the ceiling made a break for the mountaintop. I glanced at Emma. She remained fixed on the way ahead with a certainty that made me wonder if she could walk this path without a light. If the tunnel became a cave ahead, that cave was where we were going. I couldn't tell if I was more excited or scared what we would find in it.

The predicted cave opened up as we continued onwards. It was larger than even the gleaming pendant could illuminate. I tugged Emma to a halt as Jem paused. He clapped his hands and waited a full second before the echo bounced back, faint like butterfly wings.

"It's big," he said, stating the obvious.

Emma tugged me back into motion.

I got so used to walking downwards, I stumbled when the path bottomed out. Grifo pinned his ears back and whined. My heart leaped to my throat, thundering. Emma took a step ahead, and her foot clattered against something hard and heavy. She lifted her pendant.

Sprawled on the floor was a human skeleton.

I had heard Emma scream more times than I could count, but this time was something else. The cave caught the sound and echoed it in a hundred directions, and I clapped my hand over her mouth before I could think. She clung to me.

"Close your eyes," I whispered.

She did, and I lifted the pendant from her jacket. Across the cave floor ahead were more skeletons. Dozens of them, sprawled in grotesque positions where rats had fought the sinew that still linked bone to bone. Giant rats. I could see one watching me from behind a skull that barely hid it, its beady eyes glittering in a face and body the size of a small raccoon's. The bones around it were gnawed nearly in half, their clothing shredded. My hands itched for a bow and arrow. I wanted more than a knife if these things attacked.

I lifted the light and found something else.

There was a whole village here. Houses of stone blocks squatted on the cave floor ahead, their thatched roofs sagging. Black doorways yawned behind shattered, listing doors. Some huts had window coverings thrust wide, as if someone on the inside had tried to escape. It took every memory of Fuego and every scrap of my resolve to find a cure to keep me from bolting back up the path. I guided Emma between the skeletons. The pendant's pulse weakened when I turned to any direction that wasn't straight ahead.

In the village, there was more carnage. Bodies of all sizes littered the streets, where the ground was dark and flaked underfoot. Children's remains huddled in the corners of houses, women in front of them, and men at the doors. Cut down, one by one.

"Go that way," whispered Emma.

Her finger pointed past the village edge, confirming that she didn't need the pendant's guidance. We turned a corner, and I told her she could open her eyes again.

We were on another path. How far would we have to go before we reached what we were looking for? The next moment, Emma yanked me to a halt. We had reached another cave—another one I hadn't seen until I practically stumbled into it. Emma lifted her pendant with a faltering hand. There were no skeletons. The chamber was wide enough to comfortably house Grillo Negro, but not so wide that the light couldn't span it. It was perfectly circular. A concentric design occupied its floor from wall to wall, so intricate, it hurt my brain just to look at it.

Emma's pendant pulsed like my pounding heart as she let go of my hand and inched forwards. She stepped over the cave's threshold and the pulsing stopped.

I didn't move. I didn't breathe.

Nothing happened.

Emma beckoned us inside, then edged towards the middle of the design like the floor would give out on her at any moment. Jem, Grifo and I stopped halfway while she continued to the center. There was a face in the floor-carving there. Emma stepped onto it, and a blast of wind and light and sound blinded my senses.

A/N: Soft Romance, sweet feelings, and a tough emotional road to love. 

Embrace the Sky by indigosa

Love is in the air—it has always been—since the day Amaya came into Rae's life, but despite her feelings, Rae has never allowed herself to entertain the idea of turning their relationship into something more. When Amaya confesses her romantic intentions, will Rae embrace it or find a way to keep herself grounded?