my empire of dirt, adna

[adna]

one touch will make you so nervous you might stop breathing
one touch will make you so reckless you might start feeling
one touch will finally show to me what you can't hide

He has always been such a kind boy, and it is no mystery to Adna why she had cared for him so fiercely in her youth. He had always been there with a smile, a kind word, and a heart that never stopped growing. How could she, as guarded and poisonous as she was, not want to keep something like that around?

How could she ever possibly push something like that away?

But not, with him sidling next to her, she wonders at the way that fierce, youthful crush had faded into something softer—something more platonic. She can only wonder at how different he is from Beth and how she could not have gone in a further direction. She thinks about the bay stallion with his granite jaw and the words that come so slowly, so deliberately, and so often without a shred of warmth within them.

She thinks about the way her heart bruises against her ribcage whenever she thinks of Beth—

she wonders if that is how he feels when he thinks about Starsin.

“I can’t,” she says softly, dropping her head and looking at the ground.

She feels tears burning the back of her sage green eyes but she holds them back for now because she is just so tired of crying—so tired of being so weak. “You don’t have to kill anyone,” and this comes with a watery laugh, low and deep in her throat as she leans over to push him gently, playfully.

“I can’t even admit it to myself,” she whispers, feeling it scratching at the back of her throat.

There is a beat, a pause of time, a breath when she finally looks up to catch his gaze.

“You didn’t deserve that. You know that, right? Whatever she said, she was wrong.”

She does, she thinks, but she keeps such things to herself.

ADNA