“Let me breathe”

She heard it in her mind. She heard him, that is. So she screwed up her courage and took him outside.

The sky was orange with contrails, but there was no buzzing sound, at least not yet. What am I doing? she thought to herself. I’ll lose everything.

“Thank you,” he breathed into the ear of her mind, and his voice was like lilacs in the summer, her father’s hand, her mother’s hair sighing in the wind.

There was a slow and silent pause. The batteries around her building seemed to suspend their internal movements and the sky closed itself around her. Then the sound of the drones began to grow. They had detected her own breath.

“Don’t be afraid,” He said, before rising up to meet their enemy.