So little emotion passed over the woman's face, and if I was honest, it was briefly disheartening. I have known Syrena for most of my life at this point, and there was not a time that I recall seeing much more than vague curiosity upon her visage. Although now, as I gazed up at her with weepy blue eyes, her features were harder than normal, waxed into something more akin to a wall than typical indifference. Was that my fault? Was this in response to my utterance, my admitting my true feelings on the matter? She would not reject me would she!? A piece of my chest squeezed tighter than everything else, my heart fluttered at the possibility I had not dared consider when telling her such things. Syrena was my beacon, the light to my darkness, she always seemed to be there when I need her most, she would not let me down now! So when the words 'home' and 'safely' rolled off her smooth tongue, I knew at once that this was not how I wanted things to go.
For the first time in a long while, if not ever, I knew exactly what I wanted to do.
"No, no not home, somewhere else." I say softly, trying out the words like a new dress, they felt strange on my tongue. "Don't take me home Syrena, take me- take me to the Veins, so that I can speak to the Gods."
Outside of Syrena, no one else was privy to my physical ailments. In the last several months of being lost in the dark, I had learned to hone in on the pain, which was slowly becoming more specific to my hind-quarters, rather than my whole body. I discovered that if I focused on it enough, I could sort of lessen it in my head some, so that maybe it was not such a constant ache on my psyche. However, the reverberating pain in my bones was something I feared I would live with for the rest of my life, just as Mother had said. If I was going anywhere, it was to the one place that wishes might come true, if asked nicely enough. How would I manage to get anywhere 'safely' if my crippled self held the grey mare back? How could I live with the possibility of being confined behind the walls of nature in order to protect my well-being? I could not, so I would not.
"I cannot go back to that place, not yet, not until I at least try to fix myself! I cannot live knowing that I am no more than a burden to my people..." To people that hardly knew I existed, to people that did not care.
"Talk."
@Syrena