and I ran back to that hollow again
the moon was just a sliver back then
There is part of her that knows she should have gone back sooner.
Part of her that knows her mother will be displeased, her father even angry, and like a petulant child, she had avoided it. But there is also another part of her, one that is perhaps more mature, that is angry; part of her that remembers the way her mother and Kingslay had spoken about her as if she wasn't there with air that was thick with tension. The way they had stood stony-eyed on either side of her, and she had felt hopelessly lost between them—and, yet, she knows that too is an excuse.
She was strong enough to handle them disliking one another, old enough to rise above them discussing her like she wasn't there. That wasn’t the reason that she had fled and it wasn’t the reason that she had not returned yet. It was the fear. The fear of the illness spreading through her veins; the terror at what was becoming of her when the very land itself made it feel like her veins were dry and rubbing together.
The fear is the reason she had not returned.
And it is fear she felt, for a moment, when she heard her mother—the disappointment clear in the way her mother’s voice demanded her presence. Lifting her homely head, her mouth pulled into a slight frown and her stomach churned in reaction. But, like a good child, she obeyed, moving with her head dipped down low. When she was a few yards away, she came to a stop, feeling both utter relief at being in her mother’s presence and absolute fear at the memories of illness that it dredged up.
“Hello, mom.”
and I ached for my heart like some tin man
when it came, oh, it beat and it boiled and it rang