08-16-2020, 09:28 PM
── and i was never sure whether you were the lighthouse or the storm ──
The sorrow has not left her, but it has dulled.
She has been broken a hundred times over, and she has learned that she cannot sit in her hurt. Her tears and her pleas have never earned her mercy before, and she doesn't expect it to start with him. She knew that he would not come after her. He would not seek her out; he would not look for her. She would be left alone to heal herself the only way that she knew how – with someone else.
It was the part about herself that she hated most, but didn't try very hard to change.
It wouldn't matter, she thinks.
Everyone – including him – already had decided who she was, what she was like. She didn't have the energy to rebuild herself in that way.
Illum made it hard, anyway. He was not like the rest. He did not give her reasons to leave; he did not make her cut herself on all her fractured pieces to prove her worth.
And still – still she could not stay.
Still, she could not stop wishing he was Atrox, that Taiga was Hyaline.
It was a cruel thing for her to do, she knows, to keep going back. So tonight she lets her guilt take precedence over all else, and she comes to the forest, away from everyone and everything.
And when his voice cuts through the dark like a blade, she does not flinch on the outside. It's just her heart that begins to tremble on the inside.
She is quiet, letting the sound of her name on his tongue linger, afraid of chasing it away. But finally, her head turns, her pale forelock shifting just enough to reveal the smooth, pale blue sea-glass that rests in the hollow where her eyes should have been. “Atrox,” she says his name quietly, secretly grateful for the chance to say it out loud again instead of just thinking it over and over inside her head. “What are you doing out here?”
Her heartbeat quickens, and she knows that if her heart had a choice it would flee her chest. Anything to avoid a repeat of what had happened when she left Hyaline.
She has been broken a hundred times over, and she has learned that she cannot sit in her hurt. Her tears and her pleas have never earned her mercy before, and she doesn't expect it to start with him. She knew that he would not come after her. He would not seek her out; he would not look for her. She would be left alone to heal herself the only way that she knew how – with someone else.
It was the part about herself that she hated most, but didn't try very hard to change.
It wouldn't matter, she thinks.
Everyone – including him – already had decided who she was, what she was like. She didn't have the energy to rebuild herself in that way.
Illum made it hard, anyway. He was not like the rest. He did not give her reasons to leave; he did not make her cut herself on all her fractured pieces to prove her worth.
And still – still she could not stay.
Still, she could not stop wishing he was Atrox, that Taiga was Hyaline.
It was a cruel thing for her to do, she knows, to keep going back. So tonight she lets her guilt take precedence over all else, and she comes to the forest, away from everyone and everything.
And when his voice cuts through the dark like a blade, she does not flinch on the outside. It's just her heart that begins to tremble on the inside.
She is quiet, letting the sound of her name on his tongue linger, afraid of chasing it away. But finally, her head turns, her pale forelock shifting just enough to reveal the smooth, pale blue sea-glass that rests in the hollow where her eyes should have been. “Atrox,” she says his name quietly, secretly grateful for the chance to say it out loud again instead of just thinking it over and over inside her head. “What are you doing out here?”
Her heartbeat quickens, and she knows that if her heart had a choice it would flee her chest. Anything to avoid a repeat of what had happened when she left Hyaline.
ryatah
