i'll always love you the most; any

[Glassheart]

She closes her eyes, breathes deep until the cold finds her marrow at last. If this is the end, she thinks, at least it’s beautiful. At least it’s quiet. At least it’s standing still, unafraid. A death like this couldn’t possibly be frightening. 

(Snow is everywhere. The only sanctuary is here in the cave. The entrance is narrow, steep, and craggy; it hugs the snowy mountainside and offers no comforts, or chance of survival, should your footing be lost. It’s still the safest place, from him, from them, from here. She’s there, huddled in the darkness, all but frozen.)

When she opens her eyes again the cave is gone, and the only thing for miles and miles that she sees are the clouds of her breath spilling out into the night, lost. She doesn’t know who was in the cave, but the two of them are mirrored images - golden skin,dark and wild eyes, with spindly legs that ran too far, too often. She thinks she’s likely conjured her from pieces here and there of the stories her mother would tell her; stories of monsters, stories of horrors, stories of loneliness. The knowledge doesn’t stop her from appearing whenever Glassheart closed her eyes.

“Hello,” he says, the voice behind her.

And all at once she is afraid. All at once everything she’s ever grown up believing is realized. The monsters are everywhere, and when you stop, even just to catch your breath, they come. She’s angry with herself for leaving her back exposed; her mother had warned her a thousand times about the kinds of consequences for mistakes like this. It’s too late.

So, slowly, she cranes her neck to look across her shoulders at the creature she is certain in this moment will end her. She imagines the kinds of impossible things her mother narrated for her, things with bright red claws and pointed tails, monsters that wove flowers through your hair before they ruined you.

But he’s only a boy, his legs still too long for his body.

(“Are you alone?”)

The thought bubbles up, tangible, in the back of her throat but she swallows the words back down. They are not her own.

“Hello,” she echos. And then:

“Are you alone?”

Because the voices always won in the end.

@Warden