There is a moment where she knows everything will be all right.
It hits her suddenly with the force of a bolt between her eyes, lethal and sure. She feels the weight of her sister on the earth once more. She is a magnet drawing her in. She is like gravity pulling her down from where her mind has lingered too long up in the clouds. A life lived in solitude is not one she’s ever been meant for, and now, she will no longer have to. She is certain that fate has turned for her, that with the missing piece of her soul restored, everything will be just fine from here on out.
But it lasts only a moment.
Despair should come in waves once the feeling abates, once she is alone again, a lost girl in the woods. Instead, Vael rejoices. Alone is her niche. Alone is her strong-suit and best adaptation, forced perfection from too many days and nights of practice. So she sets out and moves off. Nowhere is home (nothing is curled against her twin’s side, pressed under her mother’s chin) so leaving anywhere is easy. It is the finding that is hard. But she is forever-eager.
Each new place she searches is treated with the same scoping and hopeful eyes. As she hunts her twin through the various terrains, a tenderness blossoms in her black-gold gaze as well. She falls in love with everywhere: the River with its pearlescent twilight waters, Taiga and its towering trees made ghostly with snow, Hyaline and its stark beauty that touches something familial within her. Even the Beach makes her shiver with a forbidden desire to walk its shores; she keeps her feet away and passes it with both longing and regret swirling in her breast. She finds so much she loves or could come to love, but never @[salt].
The forest welcomes her back after months on her quest. Her legs are tired but she is rejuvenated in other ways, her spirit lifted and eyes sated on all she’s seen. But still, she’s missing someone. Here, she won’t find her because it’s where she started when everything should have been all right. And if there are miracles outside of life itself, Vael has not had the pleasure of experiencing one. The dark girl keeps to the comfort of her old haunts, daring the universe to show her wrong. Make a liar of me, she thinks, peering through the tight-knit trunks of too-close trees one cloudless night. But it is silent and no sister appears. It is always silent.
lost daughter of Ramiel and Gail