Chapter Nine #2
“These last few days have been so strange to me. I am back in the world, and I am not alone. It has been unexpectedly…nice. Neither of you is what I ever expected. It had begun to feel like, maybe this could be okay. Or right, even? But I am in my heart a scholar. I believed I was meant for my cloistered life on the Isle. And I don’t know…
What will I be without that?” His slow and unsteady exhale is shallow, pained.
His words were so raw and wounded. My heart aches for him.
It aches for me, as well. Wren is right, we didn’t choose this.
We are all here to do a duty and are making the best of it. We have all lost something of ourselves in the process.
No one answers Wren’s confession, but not for lack of want. We hold our vigil here. When Wren’s ragged breaths have evened out, Chiron starts to speak. First in whispers,
“My entire life, I have known that I am the heir to Elemyr. There was no question that I would be here one day, walking the same path my parents’ Trinity walked.
The same land and the same trials would lie before me.
But…I have no concept of how to do this.
I was raised to be a King, someday. Raised to lead a people, and I have spent every day of my life under my father’s counsel, learning to do that.
But my parents’ Trinity? It is nothing but a concept to me, because before I was even born, it had lost one of them.
So I don’t know. I don’t know how to keep this together.
I don’t know how to do this.” Chiron ends his admission with emphasis, one that says this means everything.
I can feel how overwhelmed he is by his calling.
We’ve been moving through the Rite, the land, now this trial, and still, somehow, we are all so very lost.
I take my time now, not just considering everything my partners have shared but considering my own heart. The jagged edges left from leaving my home are fully alight under my skin now. I replay the day with Vestera, crying into her arms with the weight of expectations heavy on my heart.
I try, I try so hard to be strong, wise, and composed—to be worthy. I know what I need to say. I just need to say it. My voice shakes, but I try to keep the quiet tears that run down my cheeks from robbing me of it as I speak.
“When I was a very small child…a babe really, whoever my mother was, brought me to the Isle. More importantly, she brought me to the Lady and put me in her care. I have always lived there. I thought maybe someday I would inherit her station. Perhaps I would live amongst my sisters, caring for the young and teaching them, working the land, and living the life of a priestess. I am capable of all of those things; it’s what I was trained to be.
But I wasn’t trained to be this. Not a wife, not a queen.
These things I have no concept of. But knowing with my mind that I am capable is not the same as feeling it.
I am composed, but I am afraid to fail. I am afraid to fail my people, my Lady…
what if I fail you both? What if I fail everyone? ”
I allow my words to slither their way up from the pit of my stomach, where I have hidden them.
The shame of my confession, it is a tangible and smothering thing.
I hold my eyes tightly shut against the tears, and it takes me some time to notice that my chest violently shakes with them.
Breathing raggedly as the claws of shame slash my insides.
It takes me many moments to realize that my chest shakes, because it can.
Our confinement has ended. No fanfare, just a silent release from the Lands’ liminal embrace.
I suck in a long-needed breath and steady myself.
I wipe at my face with the hood of my cloak.
When I open my eyes, I realize that the sky is dark.
Time passed while we were here, but how much I cannot say; it is late in the night.
I wipe at my face again, but I know that they will see the evidence of my confession; they heard it.
I turn to them anyway. They are already waiting. They, too, are overcome.
So we do not speak. When we make our way out of the valley, we walk slowly. Our wounds are fresh and open to the night air. No longer hidden and intangible, but in the air between us. The beacon, high up on one of the hills of Naedra, is lit. I do not know how. I suppose by the Guardian.
Chiron takes my hand in his own and gives it another gentle squeeze. His hand is strong and warm. I answer it with my own grasp. I reach for Wren’s hand, and while he is hesitant, he takes my own, and we remain touching. After the deprivation of it, it feels necessary and grounding.
We make our camp quietly outside the Hills but near where our horses are kept.
No one lights a fire, no one suggests we eat.
We lie on our shared quilt, and we hold one another.
Wren faces away from me, Chiron behind me.
I press my forehead into the place between where Wren’s shoulders meet, and I wrap my arm around his middle.
Chiron holds me the same way he has these last nights, but tighter.
Closer. I can feel his breath in my hair.
Our confessions didn’t change anything physically; we are still here on this path. But I can feel that the bonds that once rested at my wrists are now on my forearms, like a circlet on each. Something intangible has become tangible between us.
the Rite has bound us against our own wills, but our fears have bound us together in spite of them. We are something firmer than what we were when we went into the hills today.
Stillness surrounds us. Sleep is scarce for me, and I can tell the way they both breathe that it is for them, too. But we remain tethered to each other here, a fortress made of three weary bodies.
The rightness of this is unsettling in a different way, and I do not wish to examine it.
We stay this way for much of the night.