I need that fire just to know that I'm awake
You’re like a star wanting to burst free.
For a moment, she stares at him, golden eyes shrouded in confusion. No one had referred to her in such an oddly lovely way before. At least, not in her regrettably brief memory. Perhaps once she had been. Perhaps that is why the cracks trace every line of her body. But still it seems an odd thing to say. At least until she peers at her shattered form, catches a glimpse of muted light.
The light answers her, a burst of brightness sparking forth in a shower of stray beams. She’d done that before, on accident. But she hadn’t known the light might leak through her skin as it did. Another lost memory, she thinks, wondering if she will ever regain her life. If she will ever know who she once was.
Hope is so difficult sometimes. Especially days like these, when her persistent scratching at that endless itch seems to not even so much as break the surface.
“I don’t feel like a star,” she answers after a moment’s hesitation. Too broken, too empty. Stars seem so bright and endless, nothing like she. Only those wayward beams of light that seem to devour everything they touch.
This talk of plague bothers her, the frown on her lips deepening as she glances around her with newly wary eyes. She cannot recall being ill ever, but the thought of plague stirs a discomfort in her breast, so she knows it cannot be good. Though perhaps it has far more to do with the way the plague has invaded this land, it’s impossible reach and grasping fingers. Dread might sink into one without them ever realizing what the cause could be. “Is it safe, do you think?”
Her golden gaze (so similar to his, if only they had mirrors) shifts to him, taking in his ephemeral features and genuine smile. He seems so free in his manner, unconcerned by the weightlessness of absent memories. Meanwhile she flounders beneath it, unable to make heads nor tails of her own life.
He introduces himself then. Tiphon. The name should be familiar, but she accepts it as the introduction of a stranger, tucking the information away (though how safe it could be in her fractured mind, she isn’t sure). He’s kinder than most, and there is comfort in that. A pull that draws her in, keeps her engaged, allowing a faint smile to finally touch her lips. “I’m Joscelin,” she offers when he asks. “Do you live here?”
Joscelin
