Catch Me

Tessa Faye couldn’t stop her body or her heart from plummeting to the dark waters below strewn with jagged rocks. Her auburn hair flew up around her face as she closed her eyes and prayed for someone to save her. She knew no one would save her, but that didn’t stop her from sending out a prayer to any deity that would hear her out. As her silent prayers reached out to the high heavens, she grasped the rosary around her neck and clutched it for dear life for the first time in her life. Tessa wasn’t a religious girl, but at this moment she was willing to believe in anything to save herself.

The edges of the rosary cut into her hand, but she kept her grip on it as she continued falling. God how she wished she hadn’t been so naïve and gullible, but that wouldn’t change her errors now. And she had thoroughly pissed off the only person in this world who could save her. So, now she was going to die, because her own personal battalion wouldn’t save her now. Fate was quite cruel sometimes, but that was life. Tessa released the rosary as she continued falling and she felt the small sliver of hope finally leave her. She just let herself fall to her death, with only the thought that she wished could have done things differently.

“Tessa!” A voice cried from somewhere above, Tessa just ignored it believing it was a figment of her imagination.

A force like a train plowing into her finally got her to open her eyes. She barely had enough time to catch a glimpse of Dante’s white hair and golden eyes, when he pushed her face into his chest and pulled her small body in tight against his. Tessa clutched his cream colored shirt in her hands for dear life, as they hit the water together. The force of their impact knocked the breath right out of Tessa’s lungs. She automatically gasped for air to no avail; she only ended up sucking in bitingly cold water. Tessa could feel herself slipping into unconsciousness as Dante swam with all his might back up to the surface. Dante just broke the water’s surface allowing Tessa to take in a big gulp of much needed air, before she began hacking up water as she clutched the white haired demon with all her might. Tessa couldn’t believe it. Dante had actually saved her, even after he had told that she could die for all he cared. She was so happy and relieved that she actually began to cry.

Dante looked around panicked at the sight of the auburn haired girl in his arms crying. Her nearly black eyes shined with tears and relief as she clung to him and wept. He didn’t know what else to do, so he began to soothingly run his hands over her hair and tell her that it was alright, he was here. At last she finally ceased crying and peered up at him through her long eyelashes.

“You came for me,” Tessa muttered in relief, burying her face into his chest as she gave him a watery lopsided smile.

“Of course I would come for you,” Dante said, ceasing stroking her hair. “I was just a bit mad. But what were you thinking following that guy? I thought I had told you to stay away from him.”

Tessa knew why she had followed the man that had pushed her off the cliff. She had wanted to make Dante jealous, like he was always able to make her. Not like she was ever going to tell him that, so she lied.

“I can’t remember why anymore,” she whispered, the lie seeming to stick in her throat as she forced herself to say it.

She kept her dark gaze locked on his soaked shirt, which was beginning to stain red with her blood from the cut on her hand she received from the rosary. The red stain slowly spread outwards, like a blossoming flower. Dante’s molten gaze glanced at the growing red stain on his shirt briefly, before he pulled her hand away from his shirt. He clucked to his self as he studied her palm.

“Your always such a klutz, aren’t you Tess?” He murmured silently, before quickly licking her wound along with her blood up.

As she watched him lick her palm, she caught that his tongue wasn’t like a normal human’s. It was ragged along the edges, almost resembling a flame. His tongue was one of the few things that gave away that he was actually a demon. Her face flushed pink automatically like it always did and her heart decided to try to run a marathon. She never had any control about it when it came to him. Dante took that moment to look up at her face to see it flushed a dark pink. Being the naive demon that he is, he automatically mistook her flushed face for her coming down with a fever.

“Are you catching a fever,” Dante asked, putting his palm against the heated flesh of her face. “You must be. Let’s get you out of this water.”

With that he began pulling her towards shore, as she tried to get her vocal cords to work to tell him that she was fine. In the end, she was dragged ashore without so much as uttering a single word. Her dark gaze took in the escarpment that she had fallen from, it was a complete sheer drop from its skyline height. It was a complete miracle that they had survived the drop without being impaled by any of the jagged rocks below. Tessa trudged ashore as a bunting trilled in a tree overhead somewhere. The songbird’s trill did nothing for her already aching head, besides bring on the beginnings of a migraine. She sighed as she plopped down on the rocky beach to wait for Dante to return. He had told he’d be right back before rushing off into the woods surrounding the beach. Her spot on the beach wasn’t anything luxurious like the place they had stayed at for the past couple nights, but she was exhausted to the point that she didn’t care. Sitting there she realized in a sense that today was the anniversary of her and Dante first meeting. She really couldn’t believe a year had gone by since they had first meet each other. A year goes by pretty fast sometimes.

A grayish-white particle floating down in front of her caught her attention drawing her out of her reminiscing. Catching it in her out stretched hand, she peered at for a few minutes before realized what it was. The grayish-white residue on her palm was ash. In that moment she noticed more of it raining from the sky, like snow. Standing from her spot on the ground, she turned to face the woods behind her to see smoke rising from the burning woods up on the cliff she had fallen from. Staring at the burning woods, her only thought was about Dante.