She had been carefully avoiding the meadow for a while now, just as she avoided the Chamber, for fear of who she would find (or who would find her). There was Sleaze, and Sleaze had placed the words in her mouth before she spoke them, he knew of impossible things, a world that should be a dream and yet even now seemed to grow more tangible every time it was spoken of aloud. There had been Erebor too, and it was just the same with him. His memories were hers and hers were his, but for the finer details which always seemed to vary.
And somehow Malis had to find a way to forget it all, to ignore the memories, the nightmares that filled some nights, the bright aching indigo that had never meant to be hers to keep. But the color had never faded, not for her, it was like a scar of impossible permanence. A wound that wept perpetually. And if she couldn’t find a way to forget, then she had to find a way to survive beneath the weight of it. But how could you tuck something like this away in your heart and not expect it to leak poison into your soul. This weight would crush her.
It was crushing her.
She paced the edge of the meadow, just a flash of indigo like a precious stone buried in the earth. Loneliness, a self-imposed loneliness, had every last nerve in her heart aching as though each throbbing beat would drop it from her chest. Even if she had ever been close with her mother, she had little desire to risk facing the kingdoms prince. To see her nightmares reflected in his dark eyes. Likewise, she could run away to the Gates to see her sisters, but she couldn’t bring herself to make these fears theirs. So when she notices the flash of black, a silhouette so impossibly familiar, she reacts without thinking.
“Dad.” She says, crushing herself against him, hating the sob buried in her voice. For a moment she says nothing more, but she wills him not to pull away, wills him with every raw, aching nerve in her heart. “Please just stay. Just for the night.” She can feel herself crumbling with each moment that stretches past them. And then even quieter, her broken face still buried in the curve of his dark shoulder, “I won’t tell mom I saw you.”
MALIS
makai x oksana