04-19-2016, 07:19 PM
Too long. I have been hiding for too long, running from the world I used to love. Once upon a time I was a young girl full of wonder and curiosity, reveling in the wind tangling in my violet mane, reaching for the sky with everything in my restless heart. Once, I was a leaf floating on that same wind, soaring through life determined to see the whole world with my own two eyes and love every moment of it.
I'm done being afraid. I'm done locking myself away from everyone but my family, doubting myself and every single person I interact with. I miss the girl who was captivated by sky blue eyes and an innocent smile, the gentle blush on a stranger's cheeks. The girl who tangled with lightning and wanted more. I've spent too many years afraid, and I'm not going to waste the few I have left afraid I'll fuck up and bring tragedy down on my family, or hurt someone I love, or any of the other bullshit excuses I've used to keep myself isolated for so long.
I have more than a few demons to face down. And the best place to start is the meadow, where so many of the scars on my heart began. Oh, the ones that should marr my skin are healed long since, through magic and despite my wishes at the time. Now I'm glad of it, glad family and strangers alike ignored my demands to leave the scars so my outside would match my inside. I wanted to look like the patchwork monster I'd believed myself to be. As the breeze dances along my unmarred skin, invisible fingers stroking the smooth expanse of pale blue and lingering along the darker steel blue primitive markings, I send silent thanks to the stubborn souls that healed me anyhow.
The meadow is unchanged and ever-changing, grasses grown high with the heat of summer going to seed as fall starts to settle in. I walk past places that were once stained in my blood and the blood of those I loved, and no trace of pain or tragedy remains. It has long since been washed away by the cleansing rain, transmuted by the verdant earth back into new life. Not even the place where the earth swallowed Gendry whole shows any sign of the devastation that day wrought, any more than my skin shows the impact of his fire devouring my flesh.
Youthful indiscretions shouldn't merit being burned alive. It took me a long time to see that wasn't my fault. So I'd gotten carried away by lightning dancing along my skin a little sooner than was wise. I was hardly the first girl to get caught up on that kind of ecstatic thunderstorm a little bit before I should have, and I doubt I was the last. I love my brother, but I didn't deserve to burn.
He was wrong.
I take a deep breath, closing my eyes as something shifts inside my chest, another broken piece of me settling back into place and making me one step closer to whole. I haven't let anyone touch me since that day in anything but casual affection or comfort. I never saw Jack again, and part of me was glad. The static shocks that rippled between us even as he walked me home felt a little too much like fire instead of that earlier rush.
I miss that goddamn rush. I can remember, if only just, what it felt like to feel free, like the world was mine to explore and experience, and all I had to do was spread my wings and let the wind carry me aloft. I remember climbing a mountain just to see what the land would look like sprawled out beneath my feet. Following the gentle tug of wanderlust across the vast stretches of Beqanna, by myself or in the company of someone I loved, just for the sake of seeing what was beyond the next hill, or the one after that, or the one after that.
I am not fire and endless burning like my brothers and my mother. But I have forgotten how to be the wind. And right about now, I wish I could be fire, if only to burn away the gilded cage I've somehow built around myself. But there isn't even a spark of it buried deep in my chest. Frustrated and disappointed, I shake my head and turn my back on the place where my body caught fire so long ago. If anything could have awoken some sleeping ember in me, it would have been facing down the place where my life went so far off course. Giving in to the restless discontent itching underneath my skin, I turn to walk away. I shouldn't be surprised it didn't work; I was never meant to be fire, was never meant to burn. I'll find another way.
I'm done being afraid. I'm done locking myself away from everyone but my family, doubting myself and every single person I interact with. I miss the girl who was captivated by sky blue eyes and an innocent smile, the gentle blush on a stranger's cheeks. The girl who tangled with lightning and wanted more. I've spent too many years afraid, and I'm not going to waste the few I have left afraid I'll fuck up and bring tragedy down on my family, or hurt someone I love, or any of the other bullshit excuses I've used to keep myself isolated for so long.
I have more than a few demons to face down. And the best place to start is the meadow, where so many of the scars on my heart began. Oh, the ones that should marr my skin are healed long since, through magic and despite my wishes at the time. Now I'm glad of it, glad family and strangers alike ignored my demands to leave the scars so my outside would match my inside. I wanted to look like the patchwork monster I'd believed myself to be. As the breeze dances along my unmarred skin, invisible fingers stroking the smooth expanse of pale blue and lingering along the darker steel blue primitive markings, I send silent thanks to the stubborn souls that healed me anyhow.
The meadow is unchanged and ever-changing, grasses grown high with the heat of summer going to seed as fall starts to settle in. I walk past places that were once stained in my blood and the blood of those I loved, and no trace of pain or tragedy remains. It has long since been washed away by the cleansing rain, transmuted by the verdant earth back into new life. Not even the place where the earth swallowed Gendry whole shows any sign of the devastation that day wrought, any more than my skin shows the impact of his fire devouring my flesh.
Youthful indiscretions shouldn't merit being burned alive. It took me a long time to see that wasn't my fault. So I'd gotten carried away by lightning dancing along my skin a little sooner than was wise. I was hardly the first girl to get caught up on that kind of ecstatic thunderstorm a little bit before I should have, and I doubt I was the last. I love my brother, but I didn't deserve to burn.
He was wrong.
I take a deep breath, closing my eyes as something shifts inside my chest, another broken piece of me settling back into place and making me one step closer to whole. I haven't let anyone touch me since that day in anything but casual affection or comfort. I never saw Jack again, and part of me was glad. The static shocks that rippled between us even as he walked me home felt a little too much like fire instead of that earlier rush.
I miss that goddamn rush. I can remember, if only just, what it felt like to feel free, like the world was mine to explore and experience, and all I had to do was spread my wings and let the wind carry me aloft. I remember climbing a mountain just to see what the land would look like sprawled out beneath my feet. Following the gentle tug of wanderlust across the vast stretches of Beqanna, by myself or in the company of someone I loved, just for the sake of seeing what was beyond the next hill, or the one after that, or the one after that.
I am not fire and endless burning like my brothers and my mother. But I have forgotten how to be the wind. And right about now, I wish I could be fire, if only to burn away the gilded cage I've somehow built around myself. But there isn't even a spark of it buried deep in my chest. Frustrated and disappointed, I shake my head and turn my back on the place where my body caught fire so long ago. If anything could have awoken some sleeping ember in me, it would have been facing down the place where my life went so far off course. Giving in to the restless discontent itching underneath my skin, I turn to walk away. I shouldn't be surprised it didn't work; I was never meant to be fire, was never meant to burn. I'll find another way.
Daeryssa
of the restless heart
