"hey."
she'd left him alone, left him alone for hours and hours, until the sky darkened and the lash of the sea echoed in the still night beginning to glisten with starlight.
and then heda left her restless bed atop the greenhils and went to find
@Bartholomew, unarmed with either food nor a closed heart.
she settled in front of him, not beside, and searched his face.
"will you talk to me?"
he was perched up at the farthest point.
psalm's point.
at some point he had thought he had seen the leathery beast, but it had been nothing more than a shadow. the waves churning down below. some part of him had wondered if kacia might come back tonight.
or tomorrow.
or any of the days that followed.
but he had realized that if she had a need to leave so early on in him wishing to court her, without telling him, perhaps he did not want to know when else she might vanish.
was it cruel?
i do not know how to speak it, heda.
"you know how to say everything else, bartholomew." heda tried to craft her worried gaze to his own, to lift the gold of his eyes to the gold of her own own.
heda listened to the waves lap. "i am your advisor," she reminded him in a soft whisper, ears falling at last. it felt like he was closing to her.
did he?
he thought on all of the things he had been unable to say in his life. he thought of how heda had perched herself before him with a voice that dared to hint he could not shy away.
his advisor.
she left without a word.
he hated how much it had immediately impacted him. how he kept his gaze away in shame and his features sagged in every way. i keep thinking that if she will leave now, this early, without a word...when else might she?
her. kacia. bartholomew suffered. "we cannot know the will of god. it works through the journeys others need to take." she did not take her eyes from his. "is it better to love first even if she leaves, or not love her at all?"
heda felt she knew.
she knew what her choice would be.
he heard himself in that voice, those words.
somehow that made it all the worse.
i do not know.
his voice croaked, creaked. the weight of a million things.
finally he let his eyes reach her own.
finally the sunspot misery of his brilliant, compelling eyes found heda's own and she could not hide her intake of breath, she could hardly bear the weight of what he held in his gaze.
but hold it she did, hold it she wanted.
"i know my love is this island," heda heard herself say, as if the words were writing themselves in her mouth. "maybe it's the same for you."
he felt small. embarrassed. mortified with himself, by himself.
ah.
a soft voice caught in the back of his throat. maybe it is.
he stood and he could feel the stiffness of his joints from clenching muscles.
will you...walk with me?
he did not know why he asked, or where he meant to walk to.
"anywhere."
and this she meant.
heda stood; she would follow wherever the man led, a shepherd and a sort of protege to a deeper healing.
care to fade for new? <3
he stewed in his mind, but his trail would take them to the tide pools.
where he might crack sea urchins for her, where he might look for psalm.
where he might feel he was still of use to anybody.