He tells her no and for a moment she hesitates, leaning back to watch him with those guarded green eyes. It isn’t that she does not believe him (what reason did they have to lie to one another) but she thinks there is more there than just a no. More than a simple answer, because how could any of this be simple. But she doesn’t pry, won’t pull the out the secrets by their roots, but she can feel that sick curiosity shaping like a stone in the pit of her chest.
She watches him silently for a moment.
There were secrets she had, not secrets, but truths she wouldn’t share. Of a clown, a different clown, this one kind and tangled in his marionette strings until she had found a way to free him. Then he had paid for her freedom (a false freedom and how she hopes he would never know that) with his life. He had died (could a toy die, could it live, Caius had but he was different) in a frenzy of flashing plastic prehistoric teeth, and still she felt the selfish guilt of a survivor. And then there had been the mare, the one who had known Malis meant destruction and had chosen to hide away in the dust filled toy chest. But as if she could sense the reluctance, Nerissa had snatched her from the shadows and gifted those gold and purple legs to the snapped off stubs Malis bore after the abuse of a game.
She looks away for a moment and tension seeps into her through every pore. “Like a dream.” She says stiffly, her quiet voice a low whisper. A life lived, time passed, and gone but for the memory when wakefulness finds you. But the color, the color, it was more than a dream. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” She tells him, looking back to his face. “It makes it seem more real. I don’t want it to be real.” Her jaw tightens, clenches like a fist, and she pushes her nose against the flat of his cheek. “I should go.”
MALIS
makai x oksana