She tries not to tense when he steps towards her. She fights every instinct that tells her to lower her head and force him away before he can get the first strike in, she does her best to chase away the memories that still clung like cobwebs in her mind from the battlefield. She doesn’t move, but she is rigid – she inhales and she holds it, she watches him with untrusting eyes and a tight jaw as he nearly touches her antlers (and she hates herself for noticing how the movement had left his throat exposed, hates herself for thinking, even fleetingly, how easy it would be to duck her head and thrust and tine right into his skin).
When he again withdraws she releases her breath, some of the tension disappearing when she shifts herself backwards to lengthen the space between them. “I guess fascinating is one way to put it,” she says a little dryly. There had been a time when she, too, had found it fascinating, but now it all just seemed twisted.
Like maybe this land was meant to break them until they were bitter and jaded; until their wonder and hope dissolved into indifference.
“I fought for them,” she answers bluntly at first, and she considers not elaborating. It would be easier to forget, she thinks, if that memory lived only in her own mind. It would be easier to move on from it and regain the beginnings of their friendship if she was not planting seeds of doubt into his own mind, too.
But her heart twists cruelly in her chest, and when her gaze sharpens onto his face she cannot hide the accusation that finds its way into her tone, “I fought you.” The heat of anger flushes in her cheeks and her pulse suddenly elevates, and this time she takes a daring step forward as she continues with a tip of her head, “Or some version of you, I don’t know. I don’t know what’s real anymore.”
Aislyn
she set fire to all the things that held her back
and from the ashes she stepped into who she always was