Essetia & Romul

And although I wasn't losing my mind, It was a chorus so sublime

A cold shadow veiled the chambers of my thoughts, vivid and irresistible. The memories were like a dam that, when touched, began to crumble, opening barriers that once kept all of the good and all of the bad at bay. Certain situations remained unclear and perhaps a bit detached, but others returned in a flood of images and words. I’d forgotten how much I’d felt and how much I’d tried to suppress those emotions beneath what I deemed to be a ‘thick skin.’ But, the results were always the same and always hugely confounding.

If I were to reflect, and I mean truly reflect, on the things I’d endured, the things I’d enjoyed, the things I’d simply loved- how could I pool them all together to form one individual, myself? It was all too complex and too large for me to justly appreciate as a whole… and so I’d forgotten in order to somehow remember.

I followed the path of his stare toward the trees, able now to disregard the old fairytales I’d been relying on. We were not royalty living in some castle. We were the paupers and the merchants- the serfs that toiled in the fields by day and feared for their families by night. The casualties we suffered were minor ones in comparison to the rights of the gods we worshipped. Even Lords were capable of falling by the wayside apparently, and who could blame him for be unable to summon such trivial faces after desiring to leave them behind? Dreamer and I had at least one trait in common- we hadn’t the room to mend another’s circumstances or learn their stories… In that way we, or at least I, was broken.

I nodded absently, still trying to recall what we’d shared so long ago. It hadn’t been much, just daydreams in fact, but it was still -he was still- something I remembered despite myself.

Like a child distracted by fireflies, my eyes danced around the woodland searching for signs of life. Yet, the forest and all its creatures were still fast asleep. Maybe I was sleeping too. I was not alive with enthusiasm nor was I filled with the vibrant hate that had consumed me before fleeing the Throat. Instead, I was pleasantly numb or just comfortably unconscious. That was, until the slightest brush velvet against my neck left my skin aflame, momentarily feeling. My muscles felt tense and I was furthermore uncertain, still unaccustomed to the advances of another aside from Romul. However, I bowed my head and sighed, welcoming Dreamer to my side. This will be a moment that I remember, I told myself silently.

After trying to fill the gaps in his knowledge about the rifts and their strange Gods, I felt as though I could do Helovia little justice where the past few months of violence were concerned. Somehow I doubted I could do such a thing even if I’d stayed. “It is a lot… and I’m probably not the one to ask about it anyhow,” I supplied regrettably.  I hadn’t been there after all. “And the Throat is quite warm, but still pleasantly so. I can’t say that I’ve tired of sunbathing just yet,” I admitted with a slight smile. “I guess the true reason I chose to come back was because I missed this-,” I said while motioning toward the tall trees around us. If stars could have been borne in my eyes, they would have glittered as my gaze trailed the surrounding wood. “-I missed calling something home.”

Slowly, with a wide, girlish stare, I looked back to Caneo hoping that he would see it too, because if he did… then maybe that meant it was real. Maybe I’d finally been able to admit why I was so tied to Helovia and its tragedies. Maybe it was simply because it was home.