and I ran back to that hollow again
the moon was just a sliver back then
Her life is quiet now—so quiet. In her youth, she had spent so much time in the loud that her ears still ring from it—from the sand shifting the sand to the impossible volume of Kingslay’s rare spoken word. They felt like bullets in her chest each time that they happened—so absolute, so permanent. To have all of that stripped from her felt like more than she could bear. Her father’s death still did not feel real. She could see her mother’s grief and it shook her to her very core to see her mother so affected.
She was without her father. Without her home. Without Kingslay.
She was without.
Etro spent her days wandering the meadow, searching—always searching. She felt it in her breast in ways that she could not understand but somehow made sense. Her motions were always the same and she always returned to sleep fruitless at the end of each day, and yet her searching continued.
So she is relieved, if not concerned, when Sleaze finds her in the midst of her searching and sobs her name. She almost sighs in relief at having something to latch onto, as she steps toward him, pressing her cheek to his neck. “Sleaze,” she says his name softly.
“I have missed you.”
and I ached for my heart like some tin man
when it came, oh, it beat and it boiled and it rang