[private] So You Came All This Way For... [Adna]

[adna]

ADNA

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

He is still but not in the same way as Bethlehem. He does not have the same granite in his expression; does not provoke her even when he says nothing at all. Instead, he is calm, peaceful, and she relaxes just slightly in his presence—her instincts that so usually flare to fight instead neutralizing when she realizes that he is not interested in fighting her. She stays on edge, her sage green eyes still flittering to the border every so often, but she tries to relax her muscles—does her best to not look so ready to fight.

“It’s been as long as I can remember,” she replies with a wry smile, although she knows he is commenting more on her future than her past. She doesn’t comment on it further, or elaborate, but instead just lets the stillness settle around her. It does not occur to Adna that when she is still like this that she looks more like her serpentine roots than ever; it does not occur to her just how much she looks like a snake coiled.

Such things do not cross her features.

Instead, she lets her lips spread into a cold smile made warm on the edges.

“I appreciate the offer,” she searches for his name but realizes he has not offered it yet. A frown furrows her brow for a moment and something genuine flashes behind her eyes. “What is your name?”

There is another moment she lets stretch out, as she does her best to ignore the pain that always simmers just below the surface. The ghosts that haunt her. The concern for her future child that just now barely has begun to stir in her belly. “Would you mind showing me around? I have never been here before.”

She had been to so many lands by her father’s side but never this one.

The wood feel familiar but it is the strangeness of it that she craves the most.

the only way to being found is getting lost at first
but all I find are more bridges to burn