i am a leaf on the wind

Somehow, everyone she has met feel like natives, like they belong. Even if they aren’t from here originally, they belong now, and that’s enough. They belong, unlike her, and the otherness of own person screams at her, cruel and incessant. And so she keeps leaving the Edge, pushing herself further and further from the others that she’s trying to be like. A good plan, clearly. Yet she cannot bring herself to stop. Cannot bring herself to stop wondering what the Throat might be like. Would it be better? Would it be the family she’s looking for?

Would it be nothing at all? 

She’s afraid to find out, afraid to leave what little she’s managed to claim as her own. 

Seanan though, belongs almost as little as she does. And though he seems wary and uncertain of her, she cannot help but like him, cannot help but want to keep him around. Just a reminder that she isn’t the only one. It is almost cruel. It is certainly selfish. But perhaps she can help him in some small way, and perhaps that’s enough.

He follows, and as they come to the small clearing, he seems to change just slightly. Not just appearance (though he shimmers and his eyes turn lavender). But he seems to grow as well – steps longer, feet kicking – and she wonders if he simply feels more confident in the open space. Free in a way he simply cannot in the trees. For her, the trees are friends, lovers. They only thing she has. For him, perhaps they are a prison.

His response is a beautiful one, holding notes of adventure beneath the words. She admires that. She, however, keeps seeking out the known. Keeps trying to pretend that this life isn’t so terribly different than her old one. Ah, but it is different. Maybe she should seek out the new. Maybe she should learn something from him.

Maybe, maybe, maybe. But fear still gnaws at her gut, and she cannot imagine acting. He asks of her own home, and with her thoughts already half in Morham (as they always are), she doesn’t find it hard to answer. “Like the Threshold, actually. Some of it, anyway. Meadows and forests. The forests were more like the Threshold, the trees less dense than here with far more sun. And then beautiful, rolling green meadows covered in flowers.” It was beautiful, but it was no longer hers. It was only her dream now.
 
“What kind of things are you looking for, then? Or simply wherever your legs take you?” Perhaps she should have done that. Perhaps she still should. Just go, and see where she lands. 

watch how i soar.

lyanna