I watch the city burn, these dreams like ashes float away...
The distance between them ached, but Lilitha wasn’t sure how to close it. Wasn’t sure Mo wanted her to, not really, and that was maybe worse than missing him to begin with. He didn’t open up and tell her much about his life these last years, just two little words that would have to be enough. Once she might have pressed him, might have tried to coax more out of him than just survival. Maybe she would, in time. But for now she just nodded, letting his empty answer pass.
She turned to look over her shoulder at Taiga’s gorgeous woods, a land she’d been banned from for the first three years of her life, told by the fairies she didn’t deserve it after defending her adopted father from their sharpness, from their cruelty. As an infant. It still astounded her that anyone thought them benevolent, that anyone listened to their silken promises of safety and fled. Fear could make fools of even the mighty, she supposed. “Yes,” she said simply.
It didn’t feel like enough, though.
“Taiga is my home. It was always supposed to be, and I won’t let anyone tell me otherwise, fairies or gods or plagues, none of it. I’m doing my best to keep Taiga safe in these dark times.” And in this world, what times weren’t dark? “So if you ever want to find me, you know where to look.” She turned back to him with sad eyes, knowing the odds that he’d come looking were slim.
She should be used to it by now. Her whole life long, no one had stayed. No one had fought to keep her. She liked to tell herself she was her constant, the one who had her back no matter what. But it was fucking lonely sometimes, and looking into Moment’s lovely teal eyes made her heart ache for a time when they promised to be each other’s family in a world that did nothing but abandon them. They’d have each other.
It hadn’t lasted long, and she should have known better than to expect otherwise.
...your voice I never heard, only silence.