Time, Ikaris had discovered, was a rather peculiar thing.
You didn't so much feel it as realize it had been feeling you all along. It slipped just beyond your grasp, avoiding notice even as it consumed you, until you could no longer tell where one day ended and the next began.
When the days blurred together into monotony, there was a strange comfort in the boredom and predictability. It was like closing your eyes after a fulfilling day and waking to find the exact same day waiting for you.
Time could crawl with extraordinary determination when one was sitting through a lecture concerning a subject already understood, yet somehow disappear entirely when occupied with something as fundamentally pointless as throwing a ball at a collection of wooden pins.
There was no reasonable explanation for this discrepancy, at least none that satisfied him, and he had long suspected that whoever decided time should pass at a consistent rate had neglected to consult the people who were actually required to experience it.
The weeks following his midnight excursion with Isabella Swan passed in much the same manner.
Slowly.
Though, looking back, he would have been hard-pressed to explain where they had gone.
Nothing particularly remarkable happened.
Arthur Vancent arrived at school one Monday morning in an exceptionally unpleasant mood, having apparently spent a considerable portion of his weekend removing toilet paper from the roof of his house, and Ikaris listened to his complaints with the patient expression of someone hearing about a tragedy that had absolutely nothing to do with him.
Bella, seated beside him, had nearly choked on her water.
He had patted her back.
Arthur had looked suspicious.
And Ikaris, who had been examining the contents of his lunch, simply remarked that perhaps the incident would encourage Arthur to reconsider throwing hard balls in gym class.
It was an unspoken, direct threat.
Arthur would try to approach Bella twice that day, but somewhere throughout the day, noticing the unusual, predatory head tilt of Ikaris, as if examining something worthy of disappearing, he ultimately decided to leave Bella alone.
The further the better. He thought.
But beyond that minor development, life continued with an almost insulting degree of normality.
Keith remained Keith, which was to say he continued producing poetry that seemed to concern either the profound suffering of the human condition or girls who had never expressed any particular interest in him.
There were poems of losing a virginity Ikaris was sure was definitely intact. Unless, Keith was ready to admit to himself that he also like people of the same gender.
Ikaris suspected that realization would come much later in his life.
Sarah, on the other hand, grew increasingly into somewhat of a peculiar unorthodoxly-cool kid at school. Her mood tended to feed off of Ikaris's, lending to a lesser degree of detachment which added to her charm.
A survival mechanism. Ikaris thought, if he had ever seen one.
She had gradually become a more permanent fixture in their little collection of social misfits, as if fully giving over to the dark side. She had changed, though perhaps that was not entirely accurate.
Ikaris suspected she had simply grown tired of pretending.
There had been a time when Sarah appeared to measure every conversation according to how it might affect her standing among the other students, carefully arranging her words and expressions to ensure she remained acceptable to people whose opinions she did not particularly respect.
Now, however, she seemed increasingly content to say whatever came into her head, a development that had produced several interesting arguments and one memorable occasion when she informed Keith that his latest poem sounded like a suicide note written by Jeffrey Dahmer.
The poem was only as so impactful if people felt it had lost something, but it sounded as if something everyone would hope would have died.
Keith had been offended.
Ikaris measured the idea and for the first time, he truly looked at Sarah as if she was something other than a regular fixture on an indifferently spinning earth.
This one is kind of smart. He thought.
And Sarah, looking exceptionally pleased with herself, had asked whether either of them wanted another slice of pizza.
Their evenings became a collection of similarly unremarkable activities.
Bowling remained a favorite, partly because Keith insisted he was improving despite an abundance of evidence to the contrary, and partly because Sarah had developed a competitive streak that made losing to Ikaris a personal insult.
On other evenings, they television called to them with a fascination it could only manage for this time period, argued over Pacman and space invaders, ate whatever unhealthy thing would be recalled in a few years due to links to cancer in teens, and discussed subjects that ranged from which teacher was secretly a predator to the possibility of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.
Ikaris enjoyed those evenings, though he was careful not to show it.
He had not expected to like it so much.
There was something comfortable about being around people who had stopped trying to understand him, or perhaps had simply accepted that understanding him was unlikely to produce any meaningful improvement in their lives.
Keith asked strange questions.
Sarah made sarcastic observations.
And Ikaris answered them both with whatever degree of honesty seemed appropriate.
Sometimes they laughed.
Sometimes they argued.
Sometimes they simply sat together, each occupied with something different, and the silence never became uncomfortable.
He was beginning to suspect that friendship consisted largely of discovering people whose company did not any effort at all.
Bella, however, was another matter.
She rarely accompanied them.
Not because she disliked Sarah or Keith, nor because they failed to invite her, but because Bella possessed an almost supernatural ability to convince herself that her presence was unnecessary.
She always seemed delighted when someone asked her to join them, smiling with that small, surprised expression Ikaris had come to recognize, but more often than not she declined, offering excuses concerning homework, her mother, or some responsibility that, if anything less than saving New York from an alien invasion with her secret identity, made little sense.
At first, he believed her.
Then he began noticing one of the peculiarities of Isabella Swan—she enjoyed living her life through other's experiences to an extent.
Bella listened with an attention that seemed disproportionate to the importance of the event, as if storing it in her mind for an insertion spot for an extra character.
She wanted to be there.
That much was obvious.
But she also seemed afraid of being somewhere she had not been specifically wanted.
Ikaris found the distinction irritating.
Not because it was difficult to understand, but because it was unnecessary.
He had invited her.
That should have settled the matter. Rare were the times when he wanted someone nearby, and even rarer were the times he felt the need to explain himself.
Unfortunately, Isabella Swan did not appear to operate according to principles he considered reasonable.
So he developed another arrangement.
One that required considerably less negotiation.
He simply went to her house.
At night.
Pebbles at her window solve the matter—at first, a dozen pebbles, then later, one pebble was enough to startle her awake. As if she was looking forward to his visits every night.
Bella, on the other hands, had discovered something rather extraordinary about Ikaris.
He was predictable.
Not in the ordinary sense, admittedly, because there was very little ordinary about a boy who could weave stories about ancient civilizations with the creativity of someone who was both delusional and aware of the delusion, or who occasionally stared at empty spaces with an expression that suggested he was remembering something that had never happened.
But he was predictable in one very specific way.
If she declined an invitation to spend the evening with him, Keith, and Sarah, there was a reasonable possibility that Ikaris would appear outside her bedroom window later that night.
The first few times, she had been terrified.
Not of him.
Of course not.
But of the possibility that her mother might discover what had become a rather alarming habit of climbing out of her bedroom window to spend several hours wandering around Phoenix with a boy.
Renée had always encouraged her to be more adventurous. Bella suspected this was not what she had meant. Eventually, however, fear gave way to anticipation.
She began listening for the faint tapping against her window, sometimes while reading and sometimes while pretending to read, her attention wandering toward the curtains whenever the night grew sufficiently quiet.
And when the pebbles came, she smiled.
It was becoming a problem.
A very serious problem.
Because somewhere between their first disastrous descent from the tree and their most recent excursion, Bella had begun organizing her evenings around the possibility of seeing him.
She never admitted it.
Not to Renée.
Not to Sarah, though she knew.
And certainly not to Ikaris.
He would probably ask why she had not simply joined them earlier, and she would have no reasonable explanation.
The truth was embarrassing.
She liked having him to herself.
Not in a possessive way, or at least she hoped not, but there was something about the quiet hours they spent together that made the rest of the world seem very far away.
During the day, Ikaris belonged to everyone in the way a scenic spot would shine for a brief moment during a specific part of the day, and you were unlikely to ever see it again.
Keith could interrupt him—a moment he would shine through.
Sarah could drag him into an argument—an even briefer shine.
Teachers could demand his attention—a dull glow.
And other students, despite his rather obvious disinterest in most of them, seemed perpetually determined to involve themselves in a conversation with him, like sharing a word or two was an uncommon achievement.
At night, however, he was simply Ikaris.
And she was simply Bella.
They walked through quiet streets, sat on the grass in empty parks, or climbed onto the low wall surrounding a nearby playground and watched the stars.
They talked.
About almost everything.
And somehow, about nothing important at all.
Bella learned that he disliked the sound of people chewing with their mouths open, considered most television advertisements an insult to human intelligence, and believed that the majority of arguments could be avoided if people took the trouble to understand what they were actually saying before opening their mouths.
She learned that he preferred silence to unnecessary conversation, but would speak for hours if a subject genuinely interested him.
And she learned that when Ikaris spoke seriously, he did not waste words.
He chose them carefully, looking directly at whoever he addressed, and seemed to place the entirety of his attention behind each sentence, as though saying something he did not mean would be an offense against himself.
It was rather intimidating.
And strangely comforting.
Because when Ikaris said something, Bella believed him.
The difficulty was that she never quite knew what he was choosing not to say.
"Do you think there are people living up there?"
Bella lay on her back beneath the dark Phoenix sky, her head resting against the folded hoodie Ikaris had insisted she use as a pillow after discovering that she cramped as easily as she tended to stumble.
He sat beside her, one knee raised, his attention directed toward the stars.
"Almost certainly."
She turned her head. "Really?"
"The universe is rather large, Isabella. It would be extraordinarily arrogant to assume that an insignificant collection of organisms occupying a single planet represents the entirety of intelligent life."
She smiled. "You make humanity sound very unimpressive." And speak as if you are not a part of the insignificant organisms.
"Humanity is impressive in certain respects. Your species has developed remarkable technologies, produced extraordinary works of art, and discovered enough about the natural world to understand how little it knows. Unfortunately, it has also devoted considerable resources to finding increasingly efficient methods of killing itself."
Bella considered that. "Your species?"
Ikaris went still—the world shattered in front of him, flecks of crystal falling away like a grounded mirror; then, it reversed as soon as Bella's fingers brushed his.
Only briefly. He had drifted.
"Ikaris?" Three seconds of silence made Bella concerned.
Then he looked at her. "A figure of speech."
She raised an eyebrow. "I do believe in aliens though." Moving the topic along.
Ikaris looked back toward the sky.
Bella watched him for another moment, then followed his gaze. "Do you think they're like us?"
"Some might be."
"And the others?"
"Different."
"That's very helpful."
"You asked a question for which neither of us possesses sufficient information to provide a meaningful answer. I could invent something more entertaining, but it would not become more accurate simply because you enjoyed hearing it."
Bella laughed. "Fine. Invent something."
Ikaris considered the stars.
Then, after a moment, he began speaking.
"There was once a world where the oceans shone beneath two moons, and the cities were built from a stone that appeared black during the day but reflected the sky at night. From a distance, the buildings looked like pieces of the heavens had fallen to the ground, and the people who lived there believed the stars were the souls of those who had died before them." He paused. "They were called The Star-Blooded."
Bella turned toward him. "Were?" She questioned.
"Were." He confirmed.
He said it so quietly that she almost missed it.
Then he continued.
"Their rulers were not particularly wise, despite being convinced otherwise, and they spent generations arguing over which of their ancestors had first discovered the stone. Eventually, they began fighting over the quarries, and the cities that had taken centuries to build were destroyed in less than a decade."
Bella's smile faded. "That's sad."
"Yes."
"What happened to the people?"
"Some survived. Others left. Most were forgotten."
She studied him. "You tell stories like you've been there."
Ikaris did not answer immediately.
He could remember the stone.
The strange reflection of unfamiliar constellations across its polished surface, the sound of voices speaking in a language that no longer existed, and the smell of rain striking streets that had been warm beneath the afternoon sun.
He remembered standing above one of those cities.
He remembered a woman beside him.
And he remembered feeling something when the fires began.
Not sorrow.
Not exactly.
Something closer to disappointment.
It was a memory.
He knew it was.
And yet it belonged to a life he had never lived.
"Perhaps I have an overactive imagination," he said.
Bella smiled. "I like your imagination."