|
You walk the same shores that you had brought him to, weaving through the little palms that you had played hide and seek in, the same sand that had been built in to mounds fashioned after castles, decorated with little seashells and pieces of driftwood; along the tide that the two of you lay beside that night, watching the stars and laughing, telling stories of the things you’d seen, listening to all his hopes and dreams, all of the things he would do someday when he becomes old enough, strong enough. It had been the first time in too, too long that you had felt whole. You sigh quietly to yourself as those precious moments become thorns in the face of his absence, in the face of his angered words when you had left him within your little alcove in the Basin (never expecting him to not be there when you returned, having given him an ounce of the independence he had craved so badly), too hurt, afraid of letting him see just how deep his adolescent rebellion, despite your understanding of its normalcy, had cut you.
“Zi?” It is called as you round a little hill with an indentation in its side, your head poking into the little cavern, dimly lit by the sun’s lukewarm rays, but when there is no movement inside, you recede, pausing to catch your shaking breath. Despite the time that you have taken to restore yourself, the week to search from everywhere between the Basin and the sea (the first place you had thought to search, he had been so drawn, as if it were the tides, not the mountains and valleys, were where he belongs) when it should have only been days, you are still not yourself. Your legs tremble beneath you, in your chest a deep ache that has followed you from the cold of the North, the marks on your back still open, oozing. You would be angry if your guilt and worry had not taken that from you; angry at the scum who had put you in this situation, the boy who had chosen to run when he should have stayed, yourself for being too stubborn to ask for help, but you suppose none of that matters much now anyways—that anger would not change a thing. You would still be sick and beaten, stupid, and Etziel would still be missing. The thought tears at you, and despite your eternal exhaustion, you force yourself to move once again along the shore, calling out his name.
|
.svg/2000px-Google_Chrome_icon_(2011).svg.png){kind=icon}
if there's no one beside you when your soul embarks
