04-02-2017, 07:19 PM
Canaan
so often times it happens that we live our lives in chains,
You just left me there.The burden of her words envelope her, crushing her beneath the weight of a deeply guarded secret, yet he is caught unaware and ill-equipped. The soft echo of her angst stricken accusation lingers in his mind as the disappointment falls away, leaving him stunned and bewildered. The anguish that festers within each bittersweet syllable and the single tear that leaves a dark stain across the indentation of her jawline is almost too much for him to comprehend, too much for him to bear.
She had never been less than impervious to emotion – often mocking at anyone bearing any weakness, callous and easily amused by the faltering will of others, yet now it is the very same thread that has somehow found itself caught within his grasp, unraveling before him. It is only a small piece – the slightest fragment, broken apart from the whole – but somehow, it is enough for him to see, for him to know. His heart, once lumbering, now pounds roughly against the iron bars of his rib cage as he is becomes wrought with the onslaught of once distant, dormant memories.
Her bitter words, her careless disregard for his own emotions, and the subtlety of her burning, scornful hatred for the vegetation resting in his belly and the oxygen within his lungs – her loathing for everything he is, a ruse. A lie. An ever-present falsehood, etched into her every word, her every action, yet –
Yet.
She had followed him.
Not to sate her hunger for something of her own, not to make stake into the damp soil or the thunderous rapids that rampantly pounds along the tired old river rock with a ferocious fury.
You just left me there.
”I,” he begins, but the words soon die away, leaving him empty and void of the million and one thoughts racing through his mind, fighting against the iron will of his tongue, aching to be said, needing to be asked, but no. She has turned away from him now, but he can still see the tension in her jaw, the hollow of her cheek where her teeth have taken grasp of the delicate skin within. He can still see the way her deep, amethyst eyes have become overwhelmed, brimming with burning, unshed tears.
There is a trace of uncertainty and hesitation in his movements, then, but he cannot allow her to drift away from him, not with some semblance of an answer left in the open air, exposed to the elements and to him. With a step taken forward, his whiskered mouth touches slightly and briefly to the slender length of her neck, and he can sense the familiar scent of pine and lavender tucked away within the tangling of her mane.
”I didn’t think you would care,” he confessed – a blatant truth, raw and unfiltered. ”I couldn’t stay. It was never asked of me, but I couldn’t be what my mother is, what my father was.” There is a faint frown tugging at the corner of his mouth as his head is tilted, searching the plane of her usually wry, sneering face.
”I had to find my own way. I didn’t think you would care,” he murmurs again, as if unsure that she had heard him. And then, ”I didn’t think you would notice.”
and we never even know we have the key.