I never cared for anyone so much. I was born with a bomb inside my gut.
It does not occur to her to smile.
Or to speak to strangers.
Or to present herself in some way that might encourage strangers to speak to her.
She immerses herself in the shadows, as if they might somehow hide the sadness. As if they cannot see the way her mouth turns down at the corners in this murky darkness. She drags in a shuddering breath and she moves slow, looks to the flowers and tries not to remember how a stranger had smiled at her and pressed a flower into the tangles of her forelock, tries not to think about how furiously she misses him.
She had gone to the field once, to see about finding a home, but she had thought better of it as the conversation had died out and she’d found that she couldn’t quite clear the rust out of her throat. This is what she was meant for, she thinks. It is the one thing her father gave her, the restless need to wander. She lingers sometimes, though, studies the way they laugh and smile and touch each other without ever making contact.
She lingers now, watching. Her expression is passive, almost serene, despite the trouble in her pulse and the vicious aching in her throat. There is a blade slipped between her ribs as she drags in a shuddering breath, surrounded by shadow on the edge of the meadow. She wishes the snow bothered her, wished the cold would sink into the marrow of her bones, if only to distract her from the reality of the ache’s source. All that wandering and all that loneliness.
It is time to go, she thinks after a long while. Time to find some other place to idly watch the hours pass. It is only as she moves to go that she realizes that she is not alone. The heart gives a violent start in the cavern of her chest as she slides her gaze deeper into the murky darkness, her mouth pressed into a thin line as she tries to catch the breath she’d lost.
“Who’s there?” she asks the darkness, her voice hoarse from all that rust.
lilian
@[Samm]