"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
Nevi was her go to when she felt sad or down. He was always so good at cuddling and bringing her close, touching his lips to her forehead and just in general making her feel like she was loved. He also made her feel bad, because no matter how much she smiled or tried to make him smile there were still shadows there in his eyes. And wouldn't she know? Wouldn't she see those shadows and recognize them for what they were even as the rest of the family seemed to not pay attention to the way his eyes would glaze slightly when they were around as he put the pain away, hid it away from them all so they wouldn't hurt for him?
He broke her heart, every day, but she loved him so much. Out of them all he was the one that had found her, patched her broken and shattered heart a little bit at a time. The others had helped of course, but if she was scared, if she was worried that her parents would hate her for something she had done, she would go to him. He took all her buried hurts, placed them on his own heart and soul already so heavy with his own.
"Nevi?" She says as she slides into the cave, slips past the entrance and pauses to let her eyes react to the light. She knows he will be here, has hidden here ever since the accident. He had been so broken, the light in his eyes so dim when the three of them had slipped into the cave that night. So weary, with the blood on their fur. On his fur. Nevi had been the only one who had been hurt, so she had nuzzled against him while Maribel had worried over Argo and Lissie-doll.
Her sister had been so perfect and so little. She had fallen in love with her. But Nevi needed her, he needed someone at least. So she had went to him, licking at his wounds gently to clean his wounds even though the blood left a nasty copper taste on her tongue. She curled against him, touching every part of him she could.
"Nevi." She says, moving deeper into the cave, deeper and deeper until the light barely penetrated and she was almost in complete darkness. "Nevi I can't see. Can you please come out?" The winter sun was pale and weak, it's light more white than golden like in the summer. So it's wavering tendrils barely made it into the depths of the cave. She takes another hesitant step forwards.
That awkward moment when you're laughing so hard but no noise comes out so you sit there clapping like a retarded seal.
I know you're trying to fight when you feel like flying.
He was trying. God, he was trying, and still he found himself lying in the darkest part of his favorite little cave, the farthest back corner where the light didn't reach, rocking and curled in on himself as if he could collapse into nothing if he just tried hard enough. Everyone was okay. Really. Mom was healing, Argo was recovering, it was going to be okay. And if there was tension in the air between Mom and Dad, or sadness lingering when eyes sought out Argo, or worry when they stared at his leg which was healing fine, well all of that only made sense. Right?
No matter how many times Mom told him it wasn't his fault, no matter how fiercely she held him to her, he still couldn't shake the guilt, the shame that devoured him from the inside. He had come so close to ruining everything. To destroying his whole family, the greatest gift he had ever been given. All the strife between his parents was because of him. All the pain, all the worry, every moment of fear in their eyes as they watched Argo, wondering...and he still hadn't told them. He still kept his Argo's secret, and if he'd told maybe things would have been different.
He couldn't have, though, couldn't have betrayed his best friend's trust like that, couldn't have broken his promise and poured Argo's secret out on the ground at his parents' feet. He would never. He could never. No more than he could have resisted Argo's big brown eyes when his brother had insisted on coming along on their disastrous adventure too. No more than he could have obeyed when Mom told them to go home. He could have done nothing differently. Even if he could go back in time, he would not have been able to undo any of it.
His fault.
The cool rock wall of the cave pressed against his skin, chill sinking in to numb him to the bones once again. Numb was better. Numb made it easier to pretend, to lie, he shouldn't lie, it was bad to lie. He was bad, he was so bad, no, shh, Mom doesn't like it when you say things like that.
“Nevi?” He didn't respond, because Nevi should not be his name anymore. He was Neverwas, because if he never was, he could never hurt anyone. He could never leave his family broken, or burn paradise to the ground. There was no room for Nevi here, because Nevi was ruin. The only safe person to be anymore was Neverwas.
I am Neverwas.
But she persisted, struggling through the darkness toward him even though the light faded with every step, even though there were so many little places to stumble, to trip, to bruise a shin...it was one of the reasons he liked it so much. Sometimes he needed to hurt, and the wounds in his leg were healing too well to do the job. She beckoned him out into the light, and for her he would listen.
Drawing in a deep fortifying breath, he forced himself to his feet, breathing out a quiet hiss as he bore weight on his injured leg. He stumbled his way over to his sister, his Leelee; the one good thing he had done in his wretched life was bringing her home to the Tundra, bringing her into the family. She was worth sunlight blinding his eyes, trying to swallow him down, trying to burn away the shadows inside without knowing it would leave him empty.
When he reached her side, he rested his heavy head on her withers, breathing out a sigh that held the weight of the whole world in its grasp. “It hurts, Leelee,” he murmured against her skin, not quite sure if he could pull together enough of a lie to convince his perceptive sister that he just meant his leg. Those dark eyes of hers saw far too much, saw past the masks and the empty smiles all the way down to the desperate agony hiding behind dirt brown eyes. He tried to lie, but he knew she would know.
To say that they were separated from their siblings when they had come into the cave that night would have been wrong. Sure, perhaps at first, but later once Mari had made sure the younger two were well, they had all come over to cuddle Nevi. Even weary Argo and sleepy little Lissie. They had cuddle piled him and Leelee had done all she could, even visualizing her love and theirs pouring into Nevi to heal him, to heal that shattered heart.
She had known it would take more. She had known that he wouldn't be healed but at least for then it was a band-aid. Something to help the hurt at least a little.
She had stopped, ears flickering when she heard the rustling of something moving in the dark depths of the cave and could only sigh in relief. Her eyes searched the dark for him. A sad smile curls her lips when she sees him hobble out. She cannot help but smile, because she loved him and he made her happy even when he was so sad and broken. Even when she could barely make out the light in his eyes that he had had when they had first met.
Sadness made her heart ache and she pulled him to her so that their chests were touching when he laid his head heavily upon her withers. She wrapped her head across his, squeezing him to her and just being silent until he spoke. Even when he does, she lets it fill the silence. Of course she knows he is not just talking about his leg. But she feels his heart thumping in her chest and her own thumping in response.
"It's not your fault Nevi." She says softly, her lips brushing a feather light kiss along his spine, not ready to release him yet. She lets their hearts thump together. This was closeness. This was love, she thinks. As she tries so hard to heal the brokenness of him like he had healed her. She would shower him in love and worth, because he was worth every damn second of pain that she felt. She would cut herself on these rocks, she would bleed into the ground for him. She wished she had been there.
Maybe then the wolves would not have taken what they had. Maybe then they would not have broken their family.
But Leelee wasn't one to let the sadness suck her down until she couldn't take a breath, until she was drowning. She refused to let that happen anymore. Now and again she would take a pity party, let it swallow her whole and escape from her eyes. But for too long she had felt like she wasn't good enough and she would not go through her life any longer thinking that.
And perhaps this really all hadn't been a conscience decision until she stood here with her brother's heart against her chest and feeling the pain that ached from him like a tangible thing in the air. She could almost feel it against her skin and makes her hair stand up along her spine. "Nevi, do you realize how much you mean to me? How much I love you?" She says, softly, her eyes staring into the darkness behind him.
That awkward moment when you're laughing so hard but no noise comes out so you sit there clapping like a retarded seal.
I know you're trying to fight when you feel like flying.
Oh, she sees. Of course she does; she was a lost girl too once, and she knows what it feels like to be broken. The way she holds onto me, cradling the silence between us, I know she understands just how jagged my insides are. How sharp the edges, how deeply they can cut. I try not to need that touch, try not to need her holding me, but I am weak. And she is safe. She is strong. She is putting herself back together piece by piece. And I am so very, very fragile.
So I hold on, just breathing in the scent of her skin, of family. We linger in the smell of her hair, the gentle touch of her lips to my spine, the softness of her voice when she tells me “It's not your fault, Nevi.” I let her words wash over me, trying to battle the ocean of blame that has slowly been drowning me, the tide rising inch by inch until I am almost completely submerged. She tries so hard to turn back the sea for me, and all I can do is cling to her words like a life preserver. Barely managing to keep my head above water this time.
I want to pour apologies at her feet, beg her to forgive me for almost ruining everything, for almost breaking us, for coming so close to destroying what I tried to give her, what Mom and Dad gave her like they gave me. Home. Safety. Family. I almost killed it, and I hate knowing what I could have cost her. But she deserves so much more than useless apology, and the words fall from my lips unspoken, I'm sorry drowning alongside me a thousand times over.
“I love you too, Leelee,” is the only answer I can give her, the only truth that won't cut her open too. “So much. I'm so glad you found me. And I found you back.” Always find me, I want to beg, because I feel so far gone, so lost in the dark even with her wrapped around me. Even as I sink into her embrace, I am gasping for breath, fighting to hold back tears. “I'm scared, Leelee,” I mouth against her skin, but I can't find the air to even whisper the words aloud. I came so close to oblivion, danced along the razor's edge between life and death, and it was only the touch of sunlight on my skin that kept me from throwing myself over that edge.
I don't know how to say the words. How do you tell someone you love so much that you came within a heartbeat of killing yourself? That it wasn't love for them that stopped you, or an angel looking at you with love in her eyes and calling you hers, or anything as unbearably ephemeral as hope. It was the crushing knowledge that you weren't strong enough to finish what you'd started. I still breathe because I am weak. Not because I'm brave or strong or good, but because I am a coward. Too scared of the dark to let it devour me completely.
“Lieschel, I...” My voice trails off and I breathe out a sigh weighed down by weariness. “I don't know how to make it stop, Lee. I tried, but all I did was make it worse.” So much worse. “All it does it hurt until I can't breathe anymore, and I don't know how to stop it and I don't know how to keep breathing when every time I do I feel like shattered glass is cutting my chest open and it hurts, Lee, and I wish I could just--”
I wish I could reach inside and pull out my heart, and trade it for Argo's. I'd give him mine's perfect function and rhythm and keep the way it slices through my ribcage and leaves me bleeding out into my chest and drowning from the inside. I would take away his pain and the way his selfless, off-kilter heart steals the breath from his lungs and leaves him weakened and dizzy, and leave every piece of him that just makes me love him more. He deserves a whole heart, and I would happily give everything I am to give it to him.
I try to cover my lapse with a lie, something innocent and not weighted down with boulders and bombs waiting to drop on someone I love. But there are no clever lies to disguise this, and no words come to me. “I don't know what to do anymore, Lee. And I'm so tired.”
06-05-2016, 10:59 AM (This post was last modified: 06-05-2016, 11:01 AM by Lieschel.)
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
“I love you too, Leelee." His words are a balm to my heart, it soothes some part of me that I didn't know needed it. But I let them, let his love wash over me and do all I can to send my own love to wash over him. Sometimes I wish I could just crack his brain open, to read the darkness that lingers there behind his eyes. Sometimes I wish I could mind read so I could just slip behind his sad eyes and take every piece of darkness from his soul. He was too good, too kind, too loving for all of this pain. For all of this blame that he keeps placing upon himself. I wish I knew. I wish I knew so I could argue with him and tell him that he was all wrong, that it wasn't his fault and sometimes these things just happen.
"Life happens Nevi. Sometimes it makes it seem like we did it to ourselves, but in reality it's not anyone's fault." I murmur, but know he can hear me. "Was it my fault that my birth mom left me in the Den? I thought so. I thought so every day until my heart was nothing more than a callous in my chest and I tried to ignore the way it would bleed." My lips touch his shoulder. "But then I found you. Or you found me. And it thumped. My damn heart came alive in my chest for you. For this beautiful family that has taken us both in, Mari too."
It thumps against his chest almost to prove my point.
"You made me feel like I have a place I belong. The Tundra helps. So does mom and dad and our Mari and Lissie-doll and Argo. But it's you, you that soothes me."
And I feel like I might have thrown too much out there, placed too much of my soul and heart out there for him that it might hurt him some more. But maybe, even though it still scares the shit out of me to reveal these things, maybe it will help him, patch up some of those smaller cuts and smooth some of the ragged glass.
I am quiet as he talks again, my ears flickering and I squeeze him to me.
"Nevi...would you tell me? Tell me about all of the darkness in that hurts you? Maybe it will help to get it out?" So I can tell you how dumb it is to take the weight of the world onto your shoulders, to suffer with it all every day until your legs almost collapse and the thoughts of not being enough slice you apart. God please tell me, please let me in Nevi. I swear I won't let it hurt me too much. I swear I will be fine. Please just let me help you, let me help and love you the way that you love me." And some how all of those words I had thought I was keeping to myself, poured out into the air between us.
.
A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.
I know you're trying to fight when you feel like flying.
“This is different, Lee,” I whisper against her skin, burying my face in her mane to hide from the way my voice is trembling, from how fragile I feel with each shaky breath. “They almost died.” I can still see one of the wolves catching Mom's throat, can still hear the way jaws snapped shut so close to Argo, can still feel teeth sinking into my leg. It still hurts with every step, every shift of my weight and it should. I deserve so much worse. They should've killed me, should've torn me apart and swallowed me down, except that would have been so much worse for Mom and Argo. Seeing that? No, no, I can't wish that either, not quite. Not knowing how it would have hurt them.
Her lips on my shoulder feel different somehow, make my heart beat a little faster. Strange. She's kissed me a thousand times, gentle brushes of her lips on my skin. I've done the same, casual little touches that anchor us together, that whisper I love you and you're safe to children who still know what it was to be lost. Still, my ears flick back with uncertainty, a nervous fluttering in my belly as I return the gesture with a feather-light kiss to the side of her neck.
“We found each other, Lee. And you do belong. You're mine, you're ours, always, just like we're yours. No matter what. You know that, right? You don't ever have to be lost again. We'll always find you.” Pouring out those truths is so much easier than the words she asks of me. Telling her how much I love her, how welcome she is, how much she means to me, that's as easy as breathing. But letting her in? Letting her see into the dark, see all the jagged pieces of my shattered-glass heart? It's not just my voice that's trembling anymore; my whole body does, my breath coming in silent little gasps, almost hyperventilating as I try to find words for something so big.
“I don't know how,” is a broken whisper as it falls from my lips, but I try anyhow. For her. “I just...it's just, I sometimes feel...like I'm drowning. Like...like there's something wrapped around my chest, squeezing, and I can't breathe. I got it all wrong, Lee. I should have gone and found Dad, should have done it differently, and if I'd been better, or smarter, or thought, it would've never happened. But I couldn't go get Dad, couldn't leave Mom and Argo alone, and I couldn't make Argo go back to get Dad, and I couldn't make Mom turn around, and what good am I if I can't even keep the people I love safe? And I tried to protect them, I did, but they still almost died and I couldn't stop it. I couldn't do anything, not for Mom and Lissie or for Argo, and if Dad had been there he could've protected them. I should've gotten Dad, and I didn't and it's all my fault.”
Once the words start, I can't stop them; they spill from my lips like the blood poured from my leg and there's nothing I can do to stem the flow. “I screwed up, Lee, and it almost cost us everything. Don't you see that? I almost ruined everything, almost broke the whole family. They should never have adopted me, they should have just left me in the Den, I don't deserve any of this. No one should love me, Isle never should have found me, I should have died like my mother said I would. I was never supposed to survive, and maybe if I'd gotten that right—I tried to leave, I tried to go so I couldn't break it all, couldn't wreck everything, but I'm a coward. Too scared of the dark, just one little step and I couldn't have hurt anyone ever again but I couldn't do it and I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, Lee.”
I don't know when I started crying, didn't notice the tears running down my cheeks and into her hair. I should let her go but I can't stop myself from clinging to her. I need the beat of her heart next to mine, need the way she holds onto me like maybe I'm not ruin, need the smell of family on her skin telling me I belong whether I deserve it or not. “I'm broken, and I'm weak, and I'm scared, and I'm so, so sorry. I just want to sleep, just want to not hurt anymore but I don't know how to make it stop.”
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
Oh god. The rips and shreds of his words to my heart are agony, but I hope him as his words fall broken from his lips, as his body begins to shake and shudder and then when the tears fall from his face into my hair and wetting my skin. I hold him, so tight I feel like I might hurt him but I continue on anyways. I hold him tight against me, so our hearts thump together, both faster than normal as the angst between us surfaces. But they thump together, thump, thump, thump.
I wait for all the words to be done falling from his lips and I cannot help the small burst of anger that begins to burn in my chest. I love our parents, and am more grateful than I can ever express to them for taking me in, for giving me a home and happiness and love. For giving Nevi a home. For taking in Mari. But where were they right now when he needed them the most? When he was in his cave for days and I was finally the only one to go find him?
It might not be fair of me to think this way but it burns there, smolders in my chest as I think of how long they have been letting him hurt this way. I know that it is just as much his fault for keeping it so bottled up, but they were his parents. They were the ones that were supposed to hurt for us. They were the ones that were supposed to take our pain away when they could.
I close my eyes briefly, holding him still so tightly that my neck was starting to hurt. I wait until I hide that anger away, until I can push it back so that it's not making him hurt more. When I can, when the tightness of it finally goes away and I can breath again, I open my eyes. The darkness behind him seems to reach for him, lingering across his skin. My ears flicker backwards, falling briefly into my mane.
"Nevi." I say firmly. I step back, finally releasing him, although I stay relatively close. But I want him to see my eyes, to see the seriousness of this as I talk to him. As I try to help my....brother. (This curiously makes my heart heavy to think of him in this light as my brother.) "It was not your fault. It is not your fault that those wolves attacked you, that mom decided to leave the Tundra against dad's wishes. It is not your fault that Lissie was born outside the Tundra. It's mom's fault." I take a breath, that anger stirring in me again. "She should not have left so pregnant, should not have taken you or Argo in the dead of winter someplace that wasn't safe. It was not your fault that the wolves bit you or made her bleed. It is not your damn fault Nevi. It's mom's. Mom is the parent, she should have known better."
I can't help the anger that curls in my chest. I try, I try so hard to push it back down. "I'm sorry Nevi. Please, please don't ever say that you are not worth what you have. You are. You are my sunshine on a dark day and I've watched you with Argo and the way you make him smile. You make us all feel so worth it, so loved, why can you not realize that we love you just as much? You were not supposed to die, if you had, then you would have. Mom would have never found you in the Adoption Den, and you would have died, if that was the way it was meant to be. You were meant to be found, to find me, to be apart of this family." My chest hurt from the pain of hearing my Nevi tell me it was his fault and he didn't deserve to live.
I go back to him, pressing my heart back against his. My chest is almost heaving as I try to keep my emotions from overwhelming me, from overwhelming us both. I wrap myself in his scent, in his embrace again and hold him to me. I squeeze my eyes close tightly, wrapping myself so tightly to him I lose sense of where he starts and I end. "I love you Nevi, more than you will ever realize. And you are worth every single centimeter of it."
.
A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.
I know you're trying to fight when you feel like flying.
“You shouldn't call me that,” I whisper against her skin as the tears slow and exhaustion overtakes me. She should know, if she doesn't already. I never told her, never wanted her to look at me and see Neverwas, but I don't know what the rest of the family has said. “It's only a half-truth, a pretty little lie Mom gave me when she found me. Not a lie, exactly, no. But not quite a truth. It's only half my name. I'm Neverwas.” I can't meet her eyes, couldn't bear to be so naked right now, so I bury my face in her hair.
It's been two years since I heard my name out loud, since I stumbled over introducing myself to Mom, unable to meet her eyes as I told her what my mother had called me. I think...I think I might hate her, the heartless bitch who stitched sorrow into my soul with eight little letters. Or maybe she just saw truth there, and wasn't afraid to speak it. I'll never know for sure, but she was right to walk away from me that day, to leave me to waste into nothing but food for a few hungry scavengers.
Maybe it would have been the same wolves that hunted us barely a year later. There's a sick rightness to it; maybe that wolf was always meant to taste my blood. Maybe he will again, maybe he'll chase me through life until he finally brings me down and feasts on my flesh. It might not be so bad, being eaten. I guess we all will be in the end, our bodies broken down and turned into food for countless other creatures, even turned into grass and devoured by our brethren. How many recycled dead have I devoured today alone?
I sigh against Lee's skin, rubbing my cheek against her mane and trying to chase away the darkness that has crept from my heart into my head. “You're right about that, though, Lee. I was meant to find you, to bring you here. We were meant to find each other.” That's something I would never take back, not even to change all the rest. All the failure, all the pain, disappointing everyone I have ever loved, everything I've ever gotten wrong is nothing next to that. I may not have gotten a whole lot right so far, but Lee is the top of that list.
“I love you too, Lee. I think I already loved you some when you bolted out of that cave the first day, and I only love you more with every one that passes. You and Argo, you're my very best friends.” I love all my siblings, but there is...there is something special about the way Lee sees into the darkest parts of me and still holds on for all she's worth. With Mari and Lissie, I'm...I'm afraid to let them see too deep, afraid to let the dark touch them. Lee knows darkness, though. She knows what it is to be lost, even if she's done a much better job than I ever did of being found.
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
"You are my Nevi. I will always call you that." I say against his skin. I didn't care what his birth mother had called him. He was not Neverwas. She was a bad mom who should have never ever named him something like that. The damage was done, I know now why there was so much sadness in his heart. Why he always had the look in his eyes that was so dark and so lonely. I know now why he hid in these dark caves and ached for the pain. Because of her, because his birth mom had been careless in her name choice for him. He was not Neverwas. "You are Nevi. Never again will you be Neverwas." I say, touching my lips to the curve of his shoulder.
Then I am laying my head back along his back and holding him some more. My heart thump, thump, thumping against his chest. It still hurts, I still feel the sadness there and the darkness that could follow. It is more manageable now for some reason. Perhaps because there is clarity where I hadn't had any before. I sigh softly, then inhale his scent. I press my nose against his skin. My ears flicker when he talks again and while I know he will never be healed until he can heal himself, I know that I can hold him and love him and be his friend in the darkness. I will stay there for him. I will linger in the shadows and then pull him into the light.
I am quiet for a long while, content to let our skin touch and to feel our hearts beat together. I am happy to feel his breath on my skin and his lips on my skin. I am happy to hear his breath and feel it as he breathes out. I am happy to just be here with him.
"Nevi?" I say after a long while of silence. "Where are you going to go when we are big? Do you think you are going to stay here in the Tundra?" And this somehow makes my heart hurt a little. I don't want him to stay here. I don't want to stay here. I want to leave one day, make my own place. But I would rather make it with him. I want to go where he goes and be with him. I, selfishly, want to have all of him. I want to have his continuing support even when we are bigger. I want to have his love and I want to be able to give him all he needs in return.
I say none of this. My eyes on the darkness behind him, although I really don't see it. I am off in my own thoughts, waiting for his answer.
A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.
I know you're trying to fight when you feel like flying.
“You are my Nevi.”
I would melt into her if I could in this moment, turn liquid and linger on her skin for a lifetime. I let her into the darkness and she didn't run, she didn't turn away, she just wrapped herself around me and called me hers. What the hell did I ever do to deserve her? Her lips brush against my shoulder, and I draw in a shaky breath, startled by the way that touch makes my skin tingle, makes my insides warm and just a little fluttery.
“I love you, Lee,” I murmur, pressing my lips into the soft spot where her neck and shoulder meet. Her words may not have erased the truth of my name, may not have torn out the stitches holding those letters into my soul, but the pain has eased. Just standing beside her, just holding her close casts light into dark, softening the jagged edges inside even if only for a little while.
She holds me close, quiet now, the only sound between us the beat of our hearts and the slow rhythm of our breath. And we don't need any words, not in this moment. All that exists is the feel of her body against mine, the silk of her hair as I rub my cheek against her mane. The way my heartbeat picks up just a little whenever she shifts her weight or touches my skin with the soft of her nose.
Then she speaks, and my heart races at the hesitant way she speaks my name, quiet and gentle and maybe even a little nervous. Her question is one I haven't given much thought to, though I should have done. I'm almost three now, a man grown I suppose, though by all accounts I still feel like the ghost of a boy I was when Mom found me.
“I...I don't know, Lee. I hadn't really thought much about it. I...I mean, our family is here. Mom and Dad, and all our siblings.” And Argo. Just thinking his name makes my heart ache in ways I don't have the words to express, and the thought of leaving...“I don't think I fit in the Tundra, is the thing. I don't mean with our family or anything, just...I don't want to become a Brother. Or. To join the Brotherhood, I mean. I love being a brother. I...” Sighing, I rub my face against her hair again.
“I don't want to leave. But I'm not a man of the Tundra. If anything, I am a man of...I don't know, Lee. Of our family. I wish the Tundra had herd lands. It would be really nice, you know? To live somewhere close, and...and maybe bring home little ones from the Den. If. I mean...it just, it hurts my heart to think of other kids growing up lost like we were. Even for a little while. Nobody to love them and take care of them and tell them everything's going to be alright. That they are home, and wanted, and they didn't deserve to be left in the dirt like they were nothing. That we—or, I mean.”
I look away, unable to meet her eyes. Because of course she's there, in my little daydream of a possible future. Her and Argo both, though I hardly deserve to hope, let alone dare to. “I mean. If you wanted. We, if you wanted. Or just me, or just me and Argo if he wanted, if you didn't, or all three of us, but you wouldn't have to just because I did. Obviously. And I have no idea if he'd want to either so I mean if you think it's dumb or you don't want to, that's okay. It's just. You know, just a thought. An idea. Just. It would be nice, that's all.” I glance back at her, barely meeting her eyes. “What...what do you want to do? Do you want to stay here? Or...?”
