The dead are laid to rest, and the living brought to heel. At last, they can return home.
The girl stands on the edge of the sea, the boy at her feet, and the ocean dances in their eyes. Cool wind whispers through her tangle of braids; it stings softly at the skin which wraps so delicately around her bones, pressing through muscle and down, down to nerve. Fire Dancer shivers against it. She has little by way of excess weight, and the oncoming winter promises to be harsh and unforgiving, to eat away at what is left of her, leaving little but a wisp of waif. Yet the copper child does not mind; she cares little, now, for the comfort of her body. She is like a spirit, an outside being trapped within this tomb of sinew and bone. Patiently she awaits the day she'll be released, when her cage will tremble to ash and dust- but she does not fight for it, not now, not anymore.
The time will come when the threads which hold her to this world finally break. Until then, she shall float, weightless, with only her brother to anchor her to the earth.
They have returned home, but it is not their home- not really, not anymore. They have known this for some time, have felt it blooming - or perhaps wilting - in their hearts, yet they have held on to the last vestiges of belonging, out of some stubborn need to recapture what has been lost. But the child is tired of lying to herself, tired of tricking herself into feeling alive; and though her brother loves the desert, it is all he can do to hold on to her. They stare across the ocean toward the distant echoes of the Throat, and the sea seems endless, impossible. Her key hangs heavy against her throat, a reminder of all they have come to leave behind. It seems to bore against her skin, tempting, taunting - You can try again, you can go back, just speak to me and the bridge will rise - and it is not without a second thought that the girl resists, but resist she does, like a child passing up that once-beloved game.
She has outgrown the Throat- or perhaps it has outgrown her. Perhaps she has shrunk into something so impossibly small that she fears she shall become nothing but a grain of sand, a burnt out ember, a memory, unloved, on a seaside breeze. Once she was mighty, but the mighty are known to fall, and the girl has faced too much fear, too much loss- too much, too much, with nothing left to lose.
Everyone who loved her is gone, after all. Gone, or ready to move on.
Except me, her brother whispers, and for the first time in months the ghost of a smile creeps across the girl's lips. It is fickle and fleeting, merely an echo of what she once was, and sad, so very sad, but it warms the boy down to his toes; ignites him, alights him, makes him believe in possibility.
Yes, Raj. Except you.
"blah blah blah."
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