13. Destruction Ronan
13
Destruction: Ronan
I watch as she walks away in a hurry, her steps rushed but calculated and even. No step shorter than the last. I know she didn’t mean the words, I could see it behind her eyes, but I couldn’t deny that the shot she fired hit its mark.
My heart.
I’m not sure how she’d always been so good at hiding her feelings. It’s almost as if she’s built an impenetrable wall around her heart and donned a mask to cover her face.
Cold and unfeeling.
Others would call her that for the fact that nothing seemed to shake her. No words hurt or deterred her, no hit was hard enough to warrant a reaction other than a smile or laugh, which was quite terrifying at times. You could never get a reaction out of her.
I knew it wasn’t due to a lack of feeling though, but a well of it. Hidden deep below the surface. You just had to be daring enough to reach for it and hope you didn’t end up drowning in the water flowing deep below.
Surface level was all she let anyone see, but two people had gotten through. I know that. Me, from my memories, and the other woman that she’d been willing to kill for. I don’t remember her yet, but I know that Silene doesn’t offer blind loyalty to anyone. You have to catch her first, and prove yourself worthy of it time and time again before she peers into your soul and determines if you’re worthy. With her it’s all or nothing.
Right now, her emotions are running high. Her cool mask has slipped away in the dream-like absence of our two other companions, Nate and Adonis. The real her, the one that felt comfortable being vulnerable , had been caught off guard. She didn’t want to say the words, but she did, and she doesn’t even know how true they already are.
“Where do you think she’s going?”
His voice, cold and curious, startles me out of my thoughts and drags my attention away from the direction she’d walked in that now holds no evidence of her departure. I open my mouth, the response ready just behind my teeth but a quiet, soft voice beats me to it.
“Perimeter. She likes to check the perimeter first thing in the morning. It gives her mind some peace.” I turn my gaze to her, studying her body language and notice that despite her dreamy and quiet nature, she only speaks of Silene with a firm assurance. She may not be willing to meet any of our eyes, but her shoulders are held just a tad higher and her eyebrows ease. This tells me she doesn’t care to convince us, she just needs to know the answer has been given for those who bother to listen.
“Her mind can be quite loud when her body stills. She may wield a blade with ease, but her thoughts tend to be the most violent part of her. In the silence, if you pay attention, sometimes you can hear it all.”
The wind picks up as no one speaks for a moment. The words of a dreamer settle in the air as the leaves run across the ground, her hair whipping sharply across her soft features.
“What can you hear?” It was Adonis, his voice a deep disruption of the air that had grown heavy around us, the only sound the whistling wind and rustling leaves. For the first time since last night, she decides to lock gazes with someone other than Silene. I’m not sure if it’s a gesture of trust after what she told me, or if it’s a dare.
“It’s almost like a machine. The way her thoughts run wild, like gears ticking and clicking and constantly slamming against one another. Each one louder than the words that she speaks.” All three of us look toward her as unease permeates the air. None of us dares to interrupt, but Adonis’ raised brows and weary stare has her continuing.
“Destruction, Adonis. It’s a vile thing, and you can hear it like a whisper echoing in the silence.”
A violent set of shivers run the length of my body as the words leave her mouth, her eyes wide, but her jaw set in determination. Adonis—to my surprise—looks away first. The last embers of the fire died a while ago, and the ash begins to move with the leaves, but I don’t look at how they scatter and mix with the earth and air. I continue gazing at the curious woman in front of me who speaks in riddles of confusing truths.
Minutes fly by before I hear the steady cadence of approaching steps. Something I know she’s only allowing us to hear so we know it’s her and not another attacker. I snap my head toward the sound and see her features have settled into a cool mask of indifference. Her emotive state neatly folded and tucked away so no one else can see that she feels just as much, if not more than the rest of us.
“We’re clear as far as I can tell,” she starts but looks around at the four of us. Carmen is still staring at Adonis for a beat before flicking her gaze back to her friend. Nate stares at Carmen, Adonis at the ground, while I keep my eyes locked on her. “Did I miss something?”
Her eyes bounce to and from each and every one of us in search of an answer, spoken or silent, to her question but no one speaks as we all rise and gather our weapons. I don’t believe that anyone wants to be silent right now, but it feels wrong interrupting a soundless morning after such words have been spoken. I’m still digesting what’s been said, when Silene speaks.
“Okay…is there a plan or are we all just on the same page for what we’re doing next?”
“We’re continuing the way we’ve been going. With how far we’ve gotten, we have to be coming up onto a trail or road somewhere.”
I would be shaking my head in agreement if it weren’t for the manic laugh that erupts out of Silene. We all look towards her in confusion, all except for Carmen who just looks around us like she’s ready for something to go bump in the night while we hash this out.
Whatever it is that we’re unaware of.
“You know you would have never caught us if we hadn’t been forced to turn back, right?” Her voice is filled with admonishment and disbelief, making me feel like a dog with my tail tucked between my legs, and I wasn’t even the one wholly on the receiving end of it. “News flash, you go that way you’re going to end up looking like a malnourished turkey on Thanksgiving.”
“What’s with you and using food to describe death?” questions Nate, as he tries to fix his hair which had gone from flopping over his forehead to wild and poking every which way from sleep. His eyes are wide and brimming with curiosity and disbelief at her ability to compare just about anything to food.
“The large presence of one combined with the absolute absence of the other makes it easy. But I feel like you’re worried about the wrong thing here,” she urges with an eyeroll. It wasn’t until she had mentioned it though, that I began to think about how I don’t recall the last time I ate. The dehydration was an obvious weight pulling me down, but the hunger…my stomach roils loudly in retaliation for the days it has spent empty. I try to go back to what I had been doing this whole time already.
I ignore it.
If only for the sake of not reminding anyone more than she just had and interrupting the conversation that needs to be had right now. “What do you mean?” The question leaves Adonis slowly, like he’s tasting each word as it leaves his mouth, unsure of how to feel about the uncertainty. As he voices it though, everything around us stills, the wind included, as if even the air is holding its breath in anticipation.
For what, though? An answer?
Or maybe whatever God is out there also knows what I do—when she speaks, nothing else has a chance of being heard.
Nothing else should even try.
She, graceful as ever, hmphs over to the center of the group, and plops herself onto the ground while grabbing a nearby stick.
“Gather around, children. Mother is speaking,” she says, and I can’t help but choke out a laugh at the way she doesn’t look at any of us as she begins to draw a picture on the ground using the small stick, probably just assuming we’d do what she said. Unsurprisingly, we do. Gathering and crouching by her side. Everyone else for the most part moves in front of her, but I opt to be slightly behind her. I look over her shoulder as my breath fans the bare skin there. I use my arms to brace myself on the ground, slightly brushing against her upper arm and elbow.
Her breath shudders as she stills. It may have only been for one painstaking moment, but it was a reaction enough to know that she’s not immune to me. That I affect her just as much as she does me. It may only be a small victory right now, but I suppose a win is a win. The more affected she is by the small brush of skin against skin might mean the less likely she is to try and kill me again, though I’m not sure I really mind much if she does.
I’ve always found her particularly beautiful when she was on a vicious streak.
“So,” her low voice interrupts my thoughts, and I bring my focus back to the ground where I notice she has drawn a small little picture of a house, squiggly and sharp lines surrounding it, and then a large circle encompassing it all. “This house is where we all woke. Our starting point.” She’s using her stick to point to the drawing of the house in question, and looks at us to make sure we’re all paying attention, but when it comes to me, she doesn’t turn her head to meet my gaze. At least not fully. Instead she just gives me a slight tilt of her head and looks towards me using her periphery as much as possible.
It would only take another inch of movement from her and the tips of our noses would touch. Our breaths would fan across each other’s lips and mingle. But that doesn’t happen. She doesn’t allow me the honor of remembering the way that it feels. At least for now.
“This.” She takes the stick and drags a long line from the house to the first bit of squiggly lines around it. “This is the field surrounding the house, and these are the trees that lead into this fun lil’ forest of death. You guys following?” She doesn’t look up again as she asks, telling me she doesn’t actually care if anyone speaks anyway. No one does. Instead, most of us nod our heads, and she follows suit as if she could feel the physical response.
“Good. Now, we’re somewhere around here.” This time she uses the small stick to point to somewhere about three quarters of the way through the forest, close to the large circle drawn around everything. “We keep heading west and you’ll end up here at this fun little thing I like to call a death wish.” She looks back up, proud of her little demonstration as she drops the stick and wipes her hands off on her pants, attempting to rid herself of the dirt coating them, but failing considering there’s not much of her that isn’t covered in dirt or dried blood.
Unfortunately for her, Nate and Adonis are still looking at her like she has three heads and didn’t explain anything good enough.
“So…when you say ‘death wish’ is it like…something we can work around, like a—uh—I don’t know, a possible death if we’re not careful but could still be an option?” The exasperated stare she levels tells me there’s no “option” here, and we need to go back to the drawing board.
“Just to be clear,” Carmen cuts in quietly while maintaining eye contact with Silene. “I think you did a lovely job explaining things. If you wanted to continue as we were, I’d be okay with that. They can go whichever way they please. I trust you.” Silene gives her a small, friendly nod. One that seems to express gratitude.
“We have no choice but to trust you wouldn’t do anything that goes against your best interest. I just would like to know if—”
“An electrical fence of sorts.” Her voice is cold and sharp as she interrupts Nate again. “Tall enough that I couldn’t see how far up it goes, stretches far enough I couldn’t even begin to guess where it ends, but you can feel it from several feet away. You can feel the current run through you as the hair on your body stands straight up in warning. I don’t want to get anywhere near that thing.” As she finishes her sentence, he just nods.
He looks around and appears to be thinking about a new plan, since the one we were working off seems bleak at best and tragic at worst.
“So, where do we go from here?” This time it’s Adonis, his voice cutting through the silence, asking the question we were all thinking. All except her, I guess, as she wears a wicked grin on her face filled with satisfied delight.
“Is it not obvious?” Her eyes meet his before they flick back down to the shitty diagram at her feet before she wipes it away.
“We go back to the start.”