cold in the violence after the war
hope is a fire to keep us warm
Brazen’s long habit of delving headfirst into every experience has not been tempered by loss. In many ways, it is a relief, the sudden appearance of an old friend. Another opportunity to reflect less on what she has lost, instead giving her the opportunity to banish those dark thoughts and revel in something lighter and happier. Of course, it is a temporary reprieve. But Brazen is hardly the kind of woman who would pay mind to such things.
Better to race headlong into unknown, crashing over and over again into something new than to dwell too long on the things she could not change.
A better friend might recognize that Lilliana too, had changed. Might catch the glimmer of sadness and regret on her face and try to alleviate those sorrows so faintly hidden. But Brazen is not designed for such things. Her own emotions are strong and tempestuous, but even she frequently doesn’t have the power to recognize them. To recognize those emotions in others would require an insight that she simply does not possess.
Still, the fleeting and carefree joys are ones she is well versed in. And those are the things she offers so freely. But of course, it is not meant to last. And today for far less time than on other days, it seems. She might have been able to cloak them in the delusion of happiness, were it not for the next words to fall from Lilli’s mouth.
The brightness of her greeting dims beneath a momentary confusion as she tries to decipher the meaning behind Lilli’s questioning words. Brazen and beautiful. Were she a more conceited creature, she might have taken that as an invitation for fliration, but the familiarity of the words strike her before any such lascivious thoughts have time to take root.
Still, it takes her a moment to place them. To reach back in the furthest recesses of her memory and recall the phrase, softly spoke through the haziness of time and youth. Some of the very first words her father had ever spoken to her. Her heart thumps inside her chest, followed immediately by a subtle ache and a pang of loneliness. Her father had been her idol, and even to this day, she misses him with every fiber of her being.
So caught up in her own whirlwind of loss and renewed heartache as she is, she does not even notice the sharp sting of her split skin fading, washed away by a healing light. Stilling, her gaze falls to the sand beneath her, blinking back the tears that suddenly threaten.
“He named me, you know.” It does not even occur to her to ask how Lilli had known those words. Nor does it occur to her that it might be purely coincidental. She had grown so used to her mother having knowledge she couldn’t possibly have to question what things anyone else might know.
Brazen