08-10-2016, 09:38 AM
He had lived so long expecting death yet it had surprised him when it came, in that terrible moment slathered in screams and bloodshed. He can still recall with dreadful accuracy the way Tyrna’s eyes had turned steely as her body changed, shifted, warped into a wolf with snarling lips and spittle frothing.
(He’d die for her, did die for her, and would do it again and again should it be asked of him.)
Waking up alive had been a blessing, with the rich draw of air into his lungs. Until he had looked around and realized he was along, weighted with the mystery of not-knowing: not knowing what had happened to him, not knowing where she was, not knowing if she was even alive. From that moment, anxiety had scrabbled at his chest, his heart beating out the questions, the statements: where is she? and is she alive and you should be dead.
The questions are rendered moot, now, her body the answer as it fits tight against him in all the spaces he’d carved out for her.
He smiles, because it’s all he can do when he looks upon her.
“Me too,” he says, and though he wonders sometimes – what their parents might think seeing them like this – he knows their own foundation is shaky, and that both have made questionable choices before.
(Truth is, he doesn’t know the half of it. The sins of his father are a secret he took to the grave.)
“I want to keep you safe,” he says, as if he were a wall and not glass, as if he could fight, “but I don’t know where to go. Where we belong.”
He’d thought the falls, once, had envisioned a life for them there (one he’d deluded himself on, to be fair). But now the thundering of water causes his heart to quicken and his mouth to sour, and he will not return there, ever.
contagion
be careful making wishes in the dark