Lirren had grown beautiful. Graveling had too, in a way – though nowhere near as lovely as her mother, she is more rough-hewn, an unfinished edge to her.
(Fitting, considering from whence she came.)
She hasn’t done much, she drifts in the dale and the meadow. The world is still overwhelming, sometimes, now that she is part of it rather than a watcher. Though she is (quite literally) an old soul, this is a new world, a new type of experience.
She knows more names, now. She knows the sound of thunder and rain on her skin.
She knows pain, even, having stumbled and scraped her good knee open – a new gash, rather than the permanent one on her, and the pain had been strange and singular and made her wonder what other experiences laid out there, what else this body was capable of.
(Bless her, she has not yet felt the many things that plagued her long dead mother – madness, heartbreak, grief, children lost and found, lovers killed in front of her; the love for a kingdom so strong she might kill for it.)
She is heartened to see Lirren, to see how the girl has grown. She remembers the girl well, and she smiles brightly upon seeing her.
“Lirren!” she is still too loud, sometimes – she loves the way her voice echoes, how the air is alive in her words.
“What have you been up to?”
.
graveling
the worms crawl in, the worms crawl out