(This writing is a messy stream of consciousness from a scattered mind. Attempting to remain true to the character, it flows where it will, and may be quite puzzling to outside eyes.)
It was a moment of quiet respite. Finally. A moment to breathe. Sturdy arms. A glowing hearth. Soft snaps of burning logs, showers of tiny sparks, keeping the black maw of the winter night at bay beyond the windows.
The past several hours were a muddy, unpleasant blur. Trying to touch the surface of that deep, troubling pool that lingered nearby, no matter where they went or what they did. Those raw, unraveled edges of the blue-eyed phantom. How she longed to gently grasp them and sew them up! To tug the seams of that old, festering wound closer together, and see it even a tiny bit nearer to being able to heal itself.
He knew this. He understood. Even encouraged it.
But there was no chance for it. No time to take a breath, when Death came lurking. Again. Death, death, death. Was there ever talk of anything else anymore? She closed her eyes and hid from it, clutching his hand. Withdrawing into herself until she couldn't hear the words anymore, only a muddied melange of grim, sad voices. She could feel the ghost hovering near, leaving her no space, no time, no ability to sort out her own thoughts.
A peculiar feeling stole over her. The same tense, thrumming agitation that she'd felt in years past, when she was younger, wilder. Angrier.
He wouldn't know that. He'd not seen it. Well, not...until now.
But she didn't fall apart. No tears burned her eyes. Tears were for the darkness, for shadowed hollows under trees and behind stones, for bedchambers or lonely alleyways. Hearing someone else weeping unlocked a rare, gentle compassion at times. The hooded giant had seen that side of her. But endless grief upon others' laps was a weighty sore. A rankling, gangrenous thing that infected everyone around it. Pride would have driven her a hundred leagues into the frozen forest before she would have burdened anyone else with such a thing.
Did he know this? She sensed that if he didn't, he was beginning to.
She had given already. Her ear. Her sympathy. Her affection. Her forgiveness. Like a thin-stretched, fraying rope, she felt.
She tried to offer some words. Advice. Withdraw, be alone, mourn as you must. She should have known better. Counsel was not wanted by the grieving. Was it ever? She knew it well herself. Let no one tell her what to do in a moment of pain or rage, lest the claws and fangs come out. And out his came.
Her body felt limp and weak with the longstanding struggle to keep things inside. She couldn’t throw herself at the long-absent ghost and rail at him with all the sorrow and worry and bewilderment and penitence that had sat, hardening like a pus-filled cyst, in the pit of her soul. She couldn’t vomit a lifetime of fear and loneliness and misunderstanding and longing and self-immolating lust at the man sitting next to her. Thus she tried to measure her words. Oh, how she tried. And when they couldn’t be measured, she withdrew herself to spare them all.
He knew it. She could tell by the way his voice became low and gentle. Temperate.
But it felt as though some kind of devilish fume had taken hold of the room. Following her like a noxious mist, slithering over her shoulder and teasing about her nostrils, coaxing her to inhale. A small, high voice was in her ear now. A child in front of her. A child. She immediately commanded herself to become as stone, dead-eyed, flat-voiced. A last, weary effort to avoid lashing out. The grating, piercing voice rose in volume. Hysterical. It’s only a child, she repeated to herself. Ignore them. They’ll go away. The girl brazenly uttered a threat. Spoke of making the huntress bleed.
The world had clearly gone mad. She could do nothing but look on in a sort of grim resignation. Quivering on the edge of snapping out her hand and dashing the mouthy brat to the floor.
He knew this at once. His voice was in her ear again. His hand taking hers, unafraid of the trembling muscles that might have struck out inadvertently.
She couldn’t remember how they’d gotten to the cottage. Scattered images of walking, hearing their shoes clunking on the cobblestones, his arm holding her up. There was no talking. Even when the hearth’s warmth appeared to drive away the night’s chill, there was no talking.
How did he know? How did he always know exactly what to do?
Her scalp tingled still from where he had tenderly brushed out her molten-copper tresses. Sitting behind her, tenderly soothing the vibrating tension from her body. No one had ever been so gentle. Not since her mother had tended to her thus in her childhood.
He couldn’t know. She hadn’t told him.
She wanted to apologize. She wanted to explain. She wanted to confess.
She was so very tired of holding her tongue.
Withheld words had piled up in her breast until they were a tangled heap. A mountain of unintelligible thoughts and feelings that couldn’t be sorted. The more he petted and reassured her, the less she was able to think coherently, until a small pebble broke loose in the form of a tiny sob.
He didn’t know what he was doing. And it wasn’t his fault.
Like the start of any avalanche, one small stone is followed by another. And then another. Then they are joined by a dozen brothers, and then a hundred thousand more. He never wavered. He never spoke. She vomited out the weeks of pent-up frustrations in a torrent of tears. Thankful that he was sat behind her, unable to see her face. There was no awkwardness, no hesitation, no revulsion for her display. Only the same, steady, soft hand going through her hair, and an arm fast around her waist to keep her upright.
He couldn’t know all the reasons. She hadn’t told him.
She hadn’t felt so utterly sapped of strength in as long as she could remember. Weariness loosed her tongue. Just a little. Fearful regret immediately ran up like a pesky, heeling dog. His own lips uttered things in turn. Disjointed, uncertain. It was comforting to hear him sounding as she felt.
Now he knew. And she knew.
The hour drew on, and night deepened.
