I need that fire just to know that I'm awake
She wonders if these woods speak to others in the way that they speak to her. Whispering dark secrets she cannot hope to understand. She should be able to, she thinks. She should know what they are saying. But her ever seeking mind cannot seem to quite fit those pieces together, the broken and jagged edges refusing to mesh. As incomplete as her own skin.
She is not left alone with her musings for long, however. The subtle crunch of feet over old snow heralds the arrival of another. A man of beautiful ivory and shimmering gold, something faintly ethereal in the quality of his presence. She cannot quite place it, but he feels familiar. Comfortable. As though he is safe in a world so clearly marked by danger.
(How odd it would be to know though, that his mind is as fractured as hers. That they both seek something they cannot quite grasp.)
As her attention shifts to him, thoughts corralled against that immeasurable sense of loss and longing, a faint spark of light emanates from her skin, tracing a crack indelibly etched there before flashing out of existence. She doesn’t notice it. Doesn’t realize her skin had once glowed with such wayward glimmers. Her features are still and solemn as she considers him, accepting his greeting as it is. A simple hello to a stranger.
She frowns faintly at his seemingly trivial comment. To him, perhaps, it is little more than a comment on the weather. But she had not known of plague. “Is there a plague?” she asks, faint concern coloring her voice. “I’m afraid I’ve been rather… absent.”
As though she had merely taken a casual trip rather than an existential search for her very soul.
Joscelin
