So don’t leave me here on my own

‘Enna,’

Your lips purse as he says your name, head shaking gently as a tremor erupts across your heart, across the aching of your soul, as your eyes rise to meet his and find there the reflection of something tender, something sincere. It moves something within you, crushes to pieces the rebellion that you had mounted minutes ago—and those shards turn in on you, cut the parts of your heart you have tried so long to bury, the parts that still yearn for promises that were never meant to be kept in the first place.

But he speaks—alluding to time spent outside of Helovia, outside of the place of sea and pine, and you crawl back into yourself, stifling a snort, fighting back the anger that scorches through you. You had stayed, stayed in your mountains and your snows, where he could find you if he ever wanted. Stayed when restlessness soaked into your bones and sorrow into your heart and all you wanted was something that would make you forget, if only for an instant. He had left—left without a word, without a thought to what it would be if you had come. And maybe he hadn’t even cared, then, if the same wanderlust that found you sought him as well, his heart too wild to be burdened by a girl who would never be anything more than a memory, her heart never enough to satisfy him.  

He had left again.

You look away from the man, his image suddenly enough to make your stomach churn, over the chill of the sea, the rivers of ice, the dimness of sky reflected there.

“Mehr,” you breathe, pushing from within you the rage that had slowly burnt to nothing, leaving you empty. He stirs further at his name, yawning as he sits balanced in the folds, golden eyes lifting to examine the man with mild interest, and you wonder if it will always be only names that you bring him, names and newness that chase him away. “He was beneath Quinn’s tree.” It is different, saying it now than it had been with your lionheart, the words more poignant, heavier, as they leave you and your gaze flickers to him before settling back over the dead of the icy sea. Perhaps it is because he had been there, helped bury her beneath sheltering boughs, and had been the one to hold the pieces of you when you had come undone.

The touch of a cold nose pressed to your neck pulls you from your waking dreams, and his voice brings your attention back to him, kaleidoscope eyes tracing the lines that you (once) cherish(ed).

“Is it?” There is the ghost of a laugh on your lips then, teasing because it is less real than the discord coiling in your chest, because it offers a distraction from the taste in the back of your mouth as you remind yourself he had made a choice a lifetime ago, that he had been the one to break from you. His movements are matched as you take a hesitant step backwards, breathing against the way that it burns to your very marrow to deny him, to deny yourself. You do not look for his face then, as afraid as you've always been of what you will not find, and more of what you will in the midst of your denial, your refusal, to fall back into him.

‘It’s been awhile; how have you been?’

For too long a moment you are quiet, still against the colorless world that engulfs the four of you, against the drumming in your chest, the pulse in your head.  For too long a moment you want only to lie, to pretend in the face of a stranger you once knew (and is he so different than you once thought after all?) that your world had not begun to truly fall apart the second he had taken himself from it. As if your son had not disappeared and you had not almost found death in your refusal to succumb to a beast’s carnal whims.

But you have never been a good liar.

“Etziel is gone, Rohan. He didn’t even say goodbye, he just…” You smile to hide the way that your heart contorts then, the way your stomach drops and the heat that rises familiarly to your cheeks. You hadn’t had the intention to tell him, to bring light to your failures in the last thing he believed of you, of your inadequacies as a mother, but a part of you hopes it sparks some recollection of the boy built of sand—a part of you that still clings to the want of him to care for the child he tossed away, of the little family he once abandoned.

You shift against the weight of it, swallowing against the lump in your throat, blinking away the layer of salted water in your eyes. The wolf presses closer to you as your chest swells with fresh sorrow, fresh anger with yourself, perhaps knowing enough to understand that it is not his usual bouts of indifference or annoyance with your tidal emotions, but quiet comfort that you need.

“I guess I kept him too close, too.”

without you I’m so lost

without you I’m so cold

rohan & enna