She is tired.
For perhaps the first time in her life, she is bone-tired.
Because there is life stirring in her gut, when there should only be death. Ironic, she thinks, or would think if she had any concept of irony, that Stave had both taken her life and given it to her.
She does not know that there are two heartbeats in her gut. Two pairs of eyes, two mouths, eight coltish limbs. With nothing to compare it to, she thinks this weight, this unbearable weight, is normal.
Oh, how she loathes it.
She lingers near the water where it is coolest, occasionally piercing her tongue with venom to dull the ache at the pit of her.
She turns her head slow, lazy when he emerges. Or materializes. She is uncertain of the extent of his magic, what he can do with it. Doesn’t care as much now as she once did. When she worshiped him. Before she learned that the feeling would never be mutual.
He says her name and she watches him a beat, considers telling him that he is wrong. She is not Gospel. She is some other foolish thing. But, in the end, she merely tips her head and says, “Ghaul.” Not as sweet or chaotic as the first time she’d let the word slip into the charged air between them.
But does she have anything to say to him? What is there to say?
“What would you like to speak about?”
