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My painful joke does nothing but make her look away, and I silently groan to the transient dirt which rises in waves from the force of my hooves. It has life so easy, dirt and sand: nobody expects the earth to care, nobody asks it for sympathy or forces guilt upon it when it doesn't oblige. It has no feeling of remorse, no terror of loss; it floats on the wind and falls to the ground, waiting for seedlings to sprout in its midst. The dirt will still be when the tall trees collapse, and no one shall blame it for causing the death.
There is no cure for the void between us. This is what I'd concluded even before I lessened the space, even before I saw her again. It was a destined outcome before we even met, because I was unwilling to let someone come close. Sure, I could offer myself on a bright silver plate, promise a shoulder and a sympathetic ear, but ultimately? There was nothing quite genuine in my regard, no no-strings-attached offer I could possibly make. The strings were there, waiting to be pulled, and soon I would have no choice but to yank them and draw back inside of myself.
Until then I could only hope to fool her, to make her believe I could actually care.
(and fool myself, of course, into believing I didn't)
For a minute I thought she might simply leave- or worse, that the silence would be my burden to fill. What was I to tell her? That it would be alright? That was a lie, which I'm sure she already knew. That I understood? I didn't even know that there was something to understand. That she needed to man up, and move on? Yes, because I was such a shining example of managing to move on. In an old world I might try to cure her with kisses, but this was a new land, and I a new me. Not for the first time I wondered why I was here. Not for the last time I was tempted to leave.
When she finally spoke her words were like gossamer spun upon the wind, sharp and surprising enough to cut through my skin, and like a coward I looked anywhere but at her face. The sand was a crater where her tear struck it down; I stared at it, wondering at the force sorrow can have, wondering at what else I wouldn't have guessed, what assumptions I'd made based on smiles and and lies. I always find myself standing alone... I had been alone for years, but at least I had the memory of family, of love, of belonging and joy to keep me alive. The thought that this girl might have none of those, yet still be able to call me brother with such sweet notes in her throat. And here I was, planning how soon I might escape.
I was a monster. She deserved so much more.
"We bring loneliness upon ourselves." It's blunt, and it's useless, but it's honest and it's what she deserves. My voice still crunched like gravel underfoot, ill-used and unkind but not heartless, not cruel. Resignation had written itself on my face, mixed with the edges of something soft, an empathy brought on by shared experience and not a good heart. "But... rarely are we as alone as we think." For instance, I'm here.
I don't mean to do it. The motion's unplanned. Looking back I know what possessed me, but at the time I did not. All I knew is that one moment I was looking at that sweet, pretty face, with the stain of a tear track and pain breaking blue eyes, and the next there was sand in a cloud by my legs, and my body had moved, and gently, so gently, I had reached out my nose to find the warmth of her cheek, intending to place there the briefest of touches, as though somehow through contact I could take on her burden and add it to my own, prove once and for all that she was not alone.
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