Many thanks to all those who have reviewed thus far, and also to anyone who has this on favorite or alert, I'm very happy that there are some people interested in this. I'm very sorry the update took so long; I had to work out some things, well, and I hope it will work out now.

Watching – Where we go from here

I breathe in slowly. I feel like I am breathing. Like atoms of oxygen sparkle around and inside of me. I don't need them anymore but still I feel them, I feel like I am breathing.

I look at Stella and I'm glad to see her breathing. Colors still seem to be dancing around her but I guess that's just my perception. It's no less beautiful and I allow myself to sink into it. Blinking when Stella blinks and gasps. I become aware that I have touched her.

Where the butterfly had been. It flutters around again. A seemingly erratic flight but I wonder … I feel it must have its rhythm, dancing to its own tune. Specks of dust the notes arranged on musical lines of sunbeams.

I see that Stella is following the dreamlike flight with her eyes too. Thoughts casting shadows in her irises. I realize what they may be. The butterfly settles on my windowsill. I suddenly wonder if it senses any difference in the sunlight after it has passed the glass. If it will ever get to know the difference. The thought weighs my head down. What if it is evidence for something?

I watch Stella get up and slowly move towards the window, into a shaft of light. Carefully she takes up the camera again and inching around she captures various perspectives of the butterfly. Photons, atoms of color banned onto film.

She opens the window; a breeze finds its way in and brushes over the butterfly's wings, through Stella's curls and through me. We watch the butterfly flutter away, a dazzling flicker of colors. Refractions of sunlight. Reflecting into me.

With a sigh Stella turns away from the window and back to the room. It feels so much like she's looking at me. But she doesn't see me. And I guess she doesn't hear me but I say it anyway. Thank you. Maybe she can feel it.

Stella lets her gaze wander through my room again. Over all those things that for her don't really have a meaning, other than that they can tell a part of my story. Things that she has to separate into two categories: possible evidence of something wrong in my life, and the rest. I'm not sure where she would draw the line but somehow I feel that she lingers, memories of her own linking to my belongings. And I feel that there are gaps in her life. I wish I knew how to fill them. I wish I knew how to fill the gap I know has been torn into my parents' life.

Stella's gaze rests on the things she has gathered to take along. Almost reluctantly she glances at her watch, as if in here even on her own she doesn't want to give the impression that time, seeming mundane, still matters. But I know what she's waiting for, or rather who. And I know that time matters very much. Being in the right place at the right time, or not. I wonder if I was in the wrong place, at the wrong time. Something definitely went wrong. I wish I'd remember what it was.

I wonder again why I am here, still here. Something seems to be weighing me down. Is it just that I want to know what happened, what went wrong? I think it can not be a feeling of guilt that I committed suicide though the notion does weigh me down, as if my heart were trying to pulse lead through me, my thoughts not sparks but of a black body. I wonder how I still feel my body but I guess it's the way I have always felt emotions somehow physically.

Maybe I'm still here because something went wrong and I have to set it right. Maybe it's because some people think that I may have killed myself. Or because of who has killed me. If so, I hope we can find him before he kills someone else. I hope that somehow I can help Stella find him.

I snap back to an awareness of my surroundings when Stella's cell rings. "Bonasera." she answers it. I hear a male voice on the other end. "Flack, hi … yeah, I had been wondering, so Mac's still busy … you can pick me up instead? That'd be great." Stella's glance trails over some of my things. "I believe I have gathered a bit more than I can really carry here … five minutes? Okay, I'll meet you outside." Stella snaps the phone shut and starts assembling the things she wants to take along.

Her words of goodbye to my mother make me wonder if I should stay here. But I can't bear to see my mother and not be able to reach her. I feel I can't do anything if I stay behind. So I step outside into the sun that seems to shine too brightly on my mother and quickly she withdraws into her gloom.

I guess the man standing next to the car must be Flack. I look into a pair of eyes as bright as the sky, blue from horizon to horizon. But I guess there can be clouds too, I see a trace of them when he notices the expression on Stella's face. Immediately he relieves her of the weight of my notebooks and other stuff and I see that he wishes he could lift more off her.

Stella joins me in the back because the passenger seat in the front is taken by a woman with long waves of dark hair and a warm smile shining from her eyes. I think she must be a detective like Flack, but both not CSIs like Stella. I sense something between them, the looks that they exchange. Something that reminds me of flan, one of my favorite desserts when we were in Spain, somehow a taste of comfort, somehow bittersweet, the perfect memory.

I miss it, and donuts too. True, I could have it here in New York as well but somehow it didn't taste the same. I don't know what it was, maybe just the air, but nothing compares to eating a donut on the beach with the sand and the sea salt sizzling over your skin in the breeze. I miss it. There is so much that I miss.

I wonder if it will always be like this now.

Many thanks for reading. Please don't hesitate to let me know what you think. All comments are very welcome, for any chapter, any time, and always replied to if logged.