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It surprises you how willingly you swallow his excuses, how there is no spark of resentment within you as he surmises all of his betrayal all wrong. You are not angry with him for leaving, because you do not know what you would have done if he had stayed, just all of the rest of it. But you are too warn, too weary to entertain such things, and as he explains that it is neither of your faults, that it just is you take that willingly, too. It seems so much easier to say that things like that happen, that neither of you could have prevented it. In a way it is what you wanted to hear, that you had done all you could to keep her safe, to give her the best chance that she could ever have. You know it is a lie, know because if you had she would still be here, but it is a lie that you cling to with desperate tightness. He touches you, and while your first instinct is to push him away, you only stand, staring at him with a blank expression. You do not return his attempt at comfort, afraid to fall back into him, for him, all over again. He wants to go to her, and you nod slightly, finally breaking away from his touch, the bittersweet warmth. It is then that you remember your shoulder, waiting patiently as your magic mends the limb before you turn to him again, jumping slightly as he moves to wipe your tears from your cheeks. You do not know how to react to this tenderness, do not know what to expect next; and so you don’t, allowing him whatever hollow affections he desires, refusing to allow your heart to feel anything but the grief that is so numbing, so new. You remain quiet throughout the time, each step away from the comfort of your home, of solitude, becoming harder as you continue. There are several times when you nearly turn and bolt, away from him, away from what lies at the end of the road, wishing that this were just a dream, that you would wake up sometime tomorrow and it would linger on your tired mind for moments before disappearing from your memory, that, somehow, not revisiting the wound in the earth that you had left, the only physical reminder that she was ever even there would make all of it disappear, undo what has been done. But you know this is foolishness, and even as you round the bend, your heart fluttering wildly against your chest, sinkingsinkingsinking, you want nothing more than to run. It is then that your eyes lay on the upturned earth beneath the embrace of a single tree, blooming with white flowers that even with all your knowledge you do not know, have never seen, that your throat suddenly closes, making it hard to breathe, the tears that had dried and left swelling hotly in your eyes. You lay beside it then, brushing your muzzle against the dry earth slowly, somehow feeling the closest that you have to her in weeks. Moments of this silent brooding pass before you acknowledge the black-skinned man again, nothing given but more of your regrets and sorrows: “I named her Quinn.” Quiet, trembling, you look to him for only a moment before returning to the pile of dirt that separates you from your first, your only, child. “Before she came all I could think about were the ways in which I was not ready for a child, the ways that I would fail her as a mother, how utterly terrified of the world she was to be born into I was, and all the ways it might hurt her, the ways I couldn’t protect her.” Your voice is a slow and unsteady pianissimo, cracking here and there through the tears, through the hurt that pulses through your veins like barbed wire, cutting, burning. “I wished that I didn’t have to be ready, that you never… that I never even knew you, that she never even came to be,” Something cold seeps into your words then, cold and distant, distraught. “But from the moment I saw her something shifted, I was so certain that she was right, and I loved her entirely. I looked upon her and saw everything that I ever needed, wanted, could ever even hope for, she was so… perfect, Caleb, and I had wished her away. Because of my own self-loating and pity, I lost her.” |
@Caleb
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