I never cared for anyone so much. I was born with a bomb inside my gut.
She knows the loneliness well.
It has been her only constant companion.
The only thing in all the world that she can count on.
She knows that there are creatures in the world who thrive in solitude, who shirk the company of others. But she has never been one of them, despite how fiercely she has fought to become one. Oh, how desperately she has tried to drag some semblance of joy out of the silence. She has tried to make herself hard, stoic, daring them not to look at her instead of wishing they would so thoroughly that it absolutely devastated her.
But why should they look at her? Why should he have called her back to the shore? She is plain, ordinary. The stars have not leaned down to kiss her, she has neither magic nor wings. Nothing about her is beautiful, nothing about her is designed to arrest anyone’s attention. So, she does not hold it against them. There is no one to blame, really. So she swallows all of it. Lets it fester, lets it eat a hole through her. Lets it absolutely destroy her.
“It is nice,” she concedes. But it is so terribly lonely and it has done nothing but further erode whatever hope remained in her. Hope that she might someday be worthwhile.
He does not turn and go, though she expects him to. He does not offer her one last parting word of warning before disappearing back into the forest at the river’s edge. Instead, he goes on standing there and she finds that this makes her heart pound just as frantically as the ice that had splintered beneath her weight. She presses her mouth into a thin line, for fear that she might say something foolish just to fill the silence.
She blinks at him then, tilts her head a fraction. Her breath is still thin and she searches his face a moment before remembering herself, looking away again. “Oh,” she murmurs, “I’ve never been there.” Has she ever heard of it? She cannot be sure. “Do you like it?” she asks and is immediately plunged into a sea of self-loathing. What a stupid thing to ask, she thinks, fighting off a grimace.
lilian
