It’s so simple, the name.
One syllable is all it is.
But it’s enough to knock the wind out of him.
Because in the days and weeks and months that followed, no one else had gotten so familiar as to learn his name. He had felt no inclination to share it and certainly no one had gotten close enough to form their own personal variation of it.
Beth, she breathes it like a whisper and that dark, wicked thing spits and hisses in the cavern of his chest. But there, in the furthest corner of his mouth, something quivers. Something like a smile. Something like an apparition that glimmers only briefly before it’s gone again.
Because she has realized what she’s done and she considers it a mistake. She corrects herself, says the name in its entirety. Something cold snakes through him.
She does not move to eliminate any of the distance between them and he does not either. For a moment, all they do is study each other across the expanse. She breaks the silence first, though they both knew she would.
“You are not any more surprised than I am, Adna,” he murmurs. Though he has no reason to be surprised, does he? She never truly implied that she did not have a home, only that she did not know where she belonged. He knows as well as anyone how it feels to be a stranger in their own home.
“I’ve been...,” he pauses and then looks away, “something.”
One syllable is all it is.
But it’s enough to knock the wind out of him.
Because in the days and weeks and months that followed, no one else had gotten so familiar as to learn his name. He had felt no inclination to share it and certainly no one had gotten close enough to form their own personal variation of it.
Beth, she breathes it like a whisper and that dark, wicked thing spits and hisses in the cavern of his chest. But there, in the furthest corner of his mouth, something quivers. Something like a smile. Something like an apparition that glimmers only briefly before it’s gone again.
Because she has realized what she’s done and she considers it a mistake. She corrects herself, says the name in its entirety. Something cold snakes through him.
She does not move to eliminate any of the distance between them and he does not either. For a moment, all they do is study each other across the expanse. She breaks the silence first, though they both knew she would.
“You are not any more surprised than I am, Adna,” he murmurs. Though he has no reason to be surprised, does he? She never truly implied that she did not have a home, only that she did not know where she belonged. He knows as well as anyone how it feels to be a stranger in their own home.
“I’ve been...,” he pauses and then looks away, “something.”