so reckless you might start feeling; beth

[bethlehem]

I can get there on my own. you can leave me here alone.

Maybe it should relieve the ache, the way she thanks him.
But it serves only to compound it.
She had expected nothing of him and maybe this hurts more than anything else.

But he shoves it aside because this is not about him. This is about their viper of a daughter and her pride, her unwillingness to yield to the elements and her youth. He knows that, from this day forward, the only thing he will worry about is her inability to admit that she has any weakness at all. Her strange sense of invincibility – but hadn’t he thought himself invincible once? Perhaps she will grow out of it, fit herself into her pride rather than use it as armor.

Despite the reason for their searching, he feels no sense of unease as they move together through the forest. The silence does not suffocate or unsettle him. They are two parents moving with a sense of purpose, bound by a daughter and a love he is perhaps not ready or willing to acknowledge yet. They are not a viper and her prey.

He hears her. And maybe the wicked thing that rears its ugly head in the cavern of his chest tells him all he needs to know about how much he loves her. It is ugly, like jealousy and he immediately resents it, exhausts every effort to bury it.

Rupture and Bela. Gospel’s siblings. He considers her question awhile, long after she’s written it off as ridiculous. He squints through the fog that gathers around them. “I don’t think places are haunted by ghosts, I think we are.”

BETHLEHEM

I'm just tryin' to do what's right. oh, a man ain't a man unless he's fought the fight.