She is good at pretending she cannot see how the dark waits for her in the edges of her world when Merry is near. How, for him, it will stay at bay. Allow itself to be pushed back by the radiance of her light when he is pressed to her side and she can hear the song of his little voice, the brightness in his laughter. Feel the warmth in his skin as though he is made of sunshine, impervious and safe from the shadows that have come so gradually, weaving in with her light until it is all that is left, cold and heavy in the quiet cage of her chest.
There isn’t a reason she can name, a moment where the balance inside her shifted. Not a point she can look back on and understand why the light seems tired, lost and faded and missing something -
Someone, but she doesn’t know that either.
They are beside her now, though. Like fingers in her mane, veins of black shot through the marrow of her fragile bones. It is because she is alone, because her Merry is with his friends, because her light withers when he is not there. And maybe the worst part of all is that she finds, less and less, that she minds them anymore. They have become familiar, old friends, rushing in to greet her when she slips soundlessly through the trees of the forest. They cling to the delicate angles of a faded blue face, pool in the hollows at her hips and shoulders, around her feet as she passes. And as always now, her light is quiet, flickering from her in puffs of bright and floating away into the evening.
Searching, but she doesn’t know that either.
@[laura]