She has worked hard to escape the past. Not to forget it, but to shed some of its weight. She’s learned time and again how easy it is to drown there, in the molasses-thick waters of memory. She is the queen of this type of drowning, until she finally learned to stop filling up her lungs.
So it would only seem right, in the cruel irony the universe seems so fond of, that a piece of her past would walk the tree line and come into her view.
Cordis doesn’t remember her well, but she does remember her. Remembers the crows, leading her to the girl – dead, and not-dead. Child of a monster.
She’d helped her. Or tried to. She doesn’t actually know if the girl was better off for her, but she remembers her intent.
She looks at her and for a moment her jaw tightens. Not at seeing her again, but at the audacity of anything from her past coming back now. She is too full of scars from her past to welcome seeing much of it again.
None of this is Caw’s fault, of course.
So Cordis relaxes her jaw. She doesn’t smile, but she doesn’t scowl, either – only looks at the girl. The lightning flickers briefly across her skin and then quiets. She does not make a show of protecting herself before her – she trusts Caw well enough not to hurt her.
“Caw,” she says, her own voice soft.
It’s been a long time, says Caw, and Cordis isn’t even sure how long it was, exactly. Decades, certainly.
“I did wonder what became of you,” she says, which was true enough – the girl had crossed her mind on occasions, especially when her own heart felt too dark and ugly to bear. Caw was a reminder that Cordis could save them, sometimes.
Assuming what she had done had been saving, and not making things worse.
I’ll touch you all and make damn sure
Cordis
that no one touches me
@Caw