so don’t forget to love me in damnation
For the living i have earned on love gone wrong
He says it so casually that the gravity of it almost doesn’t sink in.
Stone.
He turns to stone every day. She blinks at him, head still tilted in disbelief. He looks so alive, standing there in front of her, eyes wide with wonder. She wonders, if she touched him, would she feel a heartbeat beneath the surface of his skin? Is there a heart trapped in his chest or is he animated by something else entirely?
She swallows and nods her understanding, like this is something perfectly natural.
Her parents are kind and they have taught her to be kind, too. Even if there is a streak of wildness in her, because to be brave is to be rogue, if only a little.
He is smiling like it doesn’t bother him at all to lose his life every morning and she tries to smile, too but it comes out something kind of lopsided and uncertain.
Would Ennis do the same for her? Explain things to her that she could not experience for herself? He wouldn’t have to, she thinks, because she could just go mining through his thoughts. But if they couldn’t sift through each other’s heads, would he? Probably, she thinks, though she’s not sure she’d do the same for him. It seems kind of sad.
It does make her feel better, though. It helps to ease the panic, to think that this is the closest he’ll ever get to seeing the sun and she has provided him with even the barest glimpse of it.
She shakes her head at his question. “No,” she answers simply, “I cut my leg on a branch once and my blood glowed, though.”
A beat of silence then before she asks boldly, “does it hurt to turn to stone?”
anaise
@
Nemeon
