Ethenia
it was an honest mistake
In this place, she has seen far wilder things than she has ever dreamt of; a plain thing walking and breathing among magicians, sorcerers, immortals. Once, she wondered if she, too, were an immortal. The passage of time often seemed more like an elaborate illusion. After all, she doesn’t feel any older, any wiser. All she knows is that this land has shifted and changed and folded back into itself right before her very eyes, in defiance of all that she knew (or thought she knew) of the world. Water has risen and water has ebbed, kingdoms have emerged and fallen again to the dust that created them. Trees have grown and leaves have fallen, green to red to brown, so rapidly (or slowly?) that she wonders if time itself had begun move differently. Has it all been one long winter, or the amalgamation of so many that she has failed to decipher between?
No, she thinks. If one thing is certain, time slows for no creature. In truth, she did not expect to still be here. Yet, here she is: a sentinel in the shadows, a watcher, a guardian of deer. How long has she been lost in her dreams this time? The passage of time has become more like the splitting of hairs. She, too, feels as though she is being split. First it was once, then twice. By now, she is sure she has been split thousands of times, her soul pulled in so many directions she does not know what is left of herself to give to anything, or anyone.
A lost lamb, she thinks to herself, tall grasses grazing her belly before she gives pause. Her delicate face turns to watch the sun rise on a new day and she draws a long, slow breath. She has watched the same sun rise and set a thousand times, both awake and asleep. She has watched the world begin and end (both with a bang, and a whimper), and begin again despite all odds. What she does not know, is which of these visions are real? Which of these possible impossibilities have already occurred, which may come to pass? Her heart flutters so rapidly she is rendered helpless but to close her eyes. She counts: one, two, three, and waits.
She often wishes someone would simply tell her where it is that she belonged, and perhaps then she would not lose herself to this darkness.
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