I never cared for anyone so much. I was born with a bomb inside my gut.
If she had a friend, she might have sought them out.
Just to tell them how strange things have been lately.
But she has none, save for Velkan, who is a father now and otherwise preoccupied with all that entails. So, she wanders in her restless way, spurred into motion by her want to find someplace better. Warmer. Safer. There, in the back of her mind, is the reckless belief that she’ll find it someday. And yet, she rarely ever leaves the common lands.
She’d lived in Sylva for a time. Long enough to learn that there had never really been anything for her there. Her heart is a fickle thing, a desperate thing, a foolish thing. Sometimes she wishes she could carve it out of her chest and surrendered it to the earth. If only so that she would not have to worry about it anymore. She is growing tired of protecting it. And besides, she’s never been very good at it anyway. She had sacrificed the heart for a chance at feeling alive. Or, if not alive, at least something.
She loiters near the edge of the forest now. Night is gathering along the soft edge of the horizon and she considers plunging herself into the absolute darkness. Because the pulse has not quickened in some time. And anyway, the last time it did nobody had come for her. She had merely clambered out of danger’s reach on her own and stood at the edge, breathing heavily. And she had remembered, quite vividly, her place in the world.
No one will come for her now.
She drags in a shuddering breath and turns her gaze back to the breadth of the meadow, that large swath of land illuminated by the mooning hanging fat and low overhead.
The nerves hum unpleasantly just beneath the surface, the muscles aching for motion. But she remains there at the edge, contemplating. She listens to the heart’s persistent beating and wishes more than anything that she could quiet it.
lilian
