Burning Cities

The gravel parking lot by the north bank of the lake was covered in a thick, undisturbed blanket of snow. Undisturbed until my car's bald tires slid across it to park by the edge of the lake. I didn't know why I had bothered to drive out here, because I could have just driven around town a couple times and called it a day. But thinking lake and water kind of steered me in this direction.

"Serene beauty." Devin whispered out through his pale lips, and I followed his gaze to scan over the uninhabited lake that was frozen over with ice and covered with the exact amount of snow as the parking space. There were a small amount of trees that littered about, all of them with bare branches and around them tall grass would sprout from the snow.

"Yes." I said, completely awe struck at the calmness that surrounded the car and then seeped inside. It was exactly like the feeling I'd get from Devin when I tried to feel him, yet nature wasn't masking itself like I knew Devin was.

I wondered if Devin knew that I had this gift, and could feel me attach myself to him. He's certainly skilled in being able to deny my silent invitation, and had denied me before I had even tried to reach his emotions. I wanted to reach out to feel his emotions just to see if he'd react to it and look at me alarmed, or maybe just to see if he'd flinch in the way that some people do and yet those people have no idea what just happened, he seems to.

He didn't seem alarmed, but instead slowly turned his head to look at me with those icy eyes of his. Those eyes pierced through me like two bullets, turning my body into stone. "You know I can feel it when you do that?"

"Um..." I was hoping he'd notice, but now that he does, what can I say? My face flushed and my entire body heated up with shyness.

"You know your doing it. How do you do it?" He asked me as he turned his body slightly so that he was facing more my way, I turned the same.

"I...I don't know how I do it...I just want to feel your emotions so I do, but you've been masking them and all I feel is this fake calmness. My mother had the same gift, just not as strong as I can do it. I can turn channels on and off and cover an entire room filled entirely of human beings without straining myself." I told him and his eyes lit up with a sort of childish enthusiasm.

"Your correct, I can mask myself. Your not uncommon, but your rare. The given name for people that can do that is a Seeker." My face contorted in confusion and he seemed to have read this expression on my face and explained further, "Seekers are humans that come and go every once and a while, one or two in every town. Some of them can develop their abilities to greatness but others are just born with it and it develops around the time of their sixteenth birthday."

'Why do you know so much about them?" I asked him, and his face stiffened.

"Because I'm a Seeker."

My mouth fell a gap slightly as I stared at him completely shocked. He could do the same thing I could?

"Don't seem so shocked. Try again." And so I did, and a whole wave of emotions hit me. More like thoughts, about me, and the way that he had felt this pull towards me the first time I had opened the front door to get the take out. But those emotions had gone as quickly as they had come. His face seemed surprised, rigid with shock as that calmness replaced what he had been feeling.

"You penetrated my thoughts." He whispered, panting out uneven breaths. I just sat there, not knowing what to say or do about this.

The space between us felt completely awkward as he just stared at me, and I let my eyes roam to avoid staring at him for too long. They roamed outside of the windshield to the lake, where I wished the snow wasn't present above it so that underneath, hopefully, I could see the water. I looked passed the lake, or at least tried, to make out what was beyond the banks that were at least farther then a mile away from this parking lot. It took at least an hour to hike the snow hidden path around the lake, though I dare not try. Then my eyes just had to drift back to where Devin was sitting next to me, just starring at me waiting for me to say anything.

"The most important question of all..." Devin started, "is why Seekers exist."

"Why is that?"

He shrugged, "I have no idea. I am no help with that answer. In fact, I moved here to search for that answer."

"This is just too weird." I told him, feeling completely repressed and enclosed. So I opened my car door and stepped out into the cold, turning off the car and taking the keys with me. I leaned against the car for support as the bitter cold air ran down my throat and through my lungs as I breathed, calming my entire body.

Devin was beside me before I could really begin feeling the effects of the winter, and I wished he'd just stay inside the car and give me space. But the look on his face told me he was pressing to know what I was thinking, and I could feel him reach out to me but I sucked my emotions and thought inside me. I didn't know if I was doing what he was doing right, and it doesn't seemed so, because his face became more disappointed.

"I'd hope you'd figure it out. But I guess power isn't knowledge."

"And I lack in knowledge?" I asked, feeling around the lake for an signs of life. I don't know if I'd be able to feel what animals were feeling because I've honestly never tried. I felt slow heart beats underneath the ice of the lake, and I figured something was alive down there, something that could survive the winter. But the slow beating told me they wouldn't live for long and my entire body ached for that creature.

Devin's eyebrows knitted together in question, "The more I stand around you, the weirder and more intriguing you get."

I sighed loudly and crossed my arms around my chest, "Devin I think I've had enough for one day."

I was nagging to get out of here, so I did. After Devin had gotten back in the car I swerved my car around and onto the street, trying to forget a new bubbly feeling inside of my chest. The entire ride I wondered about coincidences and if it had just been pure simple coincidence that here Devin was as another Seeker that happened to stumble into my life and open up a new awkward perspective on what I am.