I wish I could take the hands of time and turn them in reverse
I'd take back every long goodbye with venom in my words
The little snake girl who always wanted to be meaner than she is.
The snake girl who thought if she bit hard enough, her hurt would be misinterpreted as fury—her defenses some how mistaken as offense. But looking at him, she knows it’s futile. The venom that had so quickly spit from her lips dies and she’s left stripped bare. She’s naked and vulnerable before the shadows on his face. She’s young and foolish and she wishes that she somehow had some armor to protect herself.
His answer knocks the wind out of her and she wishes that it didn’t. She can’t recover quick enough to keep the shadows from her face or the anguish that so quickly twists her features into something ugly.
“My father drove my mother and I from our home when I was young,” she is saying before she can stop herself from the confession—the way the truth just bubbles up her throat. “My mother used to lie and tell me stories about why we lived by the river like I wouldn’t grow up to know the truth of it.”
It doesn’t matter that her father had come to find them eventually. Just like it doesn’t matter that her mother and father broke apart after that and then came together again. They were stuck in the tidal pull of their own love and didn’t see how each collision broke Adna a little more.
They didn’t see how it fractured her worldview.
“I saw my father later—over the corpse of a foal.”
Her face twists again. It’s the first time that she’s ever admitted this to anyone. “He looked up at me and told me he was hungry—and that I carry that in me too. He said ‘our survival spells someone’s doom.’” She laughs and the sound is bitter on her tongue. “Of course, he didn’t know my name at the time.”
She swallows hard again.
“I don’t think anything in this world is precious. Not any more.”
the only way to be being found is getting lost at first
but all I find are more bridges to burn
