so reckless you might start feeling; beth

[bethlehem]

I can get there on my own. you can leave me here alone.

It calls to mind their very first conversation.
How she’d told him that she didn’t know where she belonged.
How she’d asked him how she could stop looking, stop caring.

Had he had an answer for her then? It seems a lifetime ago. And maybe it has been. He does not remember, really. Though there are so many things he doesn’t remember. He’d been chasing a memory when she’d found him, an anguished cry ripped out of his throat. All he remembers is the feeling of chasing something he’d never catch and the way she’d bore down on him, gnashed her teeth, threatened his life. All he remembers is her anger and his bitter helplessness.

He casts a sidelong glance in her direction, his head tilted as he considers it. He reaches out for her as they walk, pressing his mouth into the smooth, scaled plain of her shoulder briefly before pulling away again, reorienting his focus with the path unfurling before them. “You seem pretty real to me,” he says and there, a slanted smile.

“What’s haunting you now, Adna?” he asks. He has not forgotten why they have set out, what they are looking for. There is still a troubled beating to his heart. But this is an unfamiliar softness, a kind of peace in the eye of a hurricane. He is still aware of the chaos, but they are safe here, for the moment.

BETHLEHEM

I'm just tryin' to do what's right. oh, a man ain't a man unless he's fought the fight.