Wapun Meadow I won't turn back anymore

She kept her gaze turned from him. For months she'd been able to hide herself behind walls of ice, but that had been easy when she had been alone. Desna had cracked those walls the moment she had tried to get near her. With her brother before her now, the fractures only grew. She couldn't run this time like she had from Desna. Nanook knew where Desna was. As long as her mother was in Maplewood, Desna would be there, too. But she had already lost Xan once, and she couldn't leave him now that she'd finally found him again.

Nanook caught his step in her peripheral, but she only turned when she heard his voice, much to her regret. His turbulent emotion swallowed her like a river flood, and she shied her eyes away from him so that her gaze fell to the side of his stricken face. Yet the show of his fear burned a seal in her memory, one that would long disturb her, and her own legs trembled.

She felt a tingle at his words, but the conflicting emotion twisted her heart with another sear of guilt. Papa missed her - which meant he had never wanted to leave her at all. Of course not. Mama had been the first to move away. For the first time since their split, Nanook worried that she really had abandoned them, like Xan believed. But she had little capacity to dwell further on her fear. Her thoughts swirled with her brother's proposition, and despite the war-drum beat of her heart, she settled her gaze on him again. He wanted her with him - wasn't that what she had wanted from the start? - yet somehow, everything still felt so wrong.

"I miss you so much." She could not keep contact with the sea in his eyes for more than a second before she shied away again. His pain radiated until it was her own, and she felt the fractures grow. "I miss everyone." Her words came with a quiet sob, one full of both sorrow and anger. "Why do I have to choose? Why can't we all be together again, like we were before? You, me, papa, mama, Sesi, and Desna. Why is our family like this?" She didn't know if Xan knew the answers, but they'd eaten away at her far too long, and in this moment, she was desperate for anything.