She doesn’t like this story.
She doesn’t like it because it is too much like a mirror, albeit a funhouse one, something stretching and distorting.
I made a family, Caw says, and Cordis remembers her own family, their twins, the short, brief, wonderful period when it had been the four of them.
I lost a child, Caw says, and Cordis remembers her daughter – silver, the dead spit of her – being taken by Him, and her helpless to stop it. Perse had lived, but there was a horrible part of Cordis that wished she hadn’t, because death was far more swift and finite than the tortures that lay before her.
There is more – words in her head, loud, and Cordis catches bits - I ran and shame and too much to bear and these, too, are things Cordis knows all too well.
She is sorry for her. It is a terrible pain, and she knows Caw, like herself, is no stranger to pain. She wants to comfort her, to heal the invisible wounds, but Cordis has never been someone who knows how to comfort. She steps closer, though, closer than she’s been to another in months – years, maybe -and speaks softly.
“I’m sorry,” she says, and knows how hollow sympathies are, but feels compelled to offer them anyway.
Caw still admits her gratitude, which Cordis is oddly relived to hear. She is glad that Caw still sees everything as worth it, despite the pain, the loss. Cordis is trying to do that, too.
“I’m glad,” she says, “that it’s been worth it.”
She’s done many terrible, regrettable things in her life, so there is a small light in the fact that Caw is not one of them.
I’ll touch you all and make damn sure
Cordis
that no one touches me