How many days had it been?
The lake was now a sanctuary, even if Wren could not stand to look at it. Even if she saw only the beautiful downy face in the reflection, even if the gravel bottom hurt her feet to step in, even if the waterfoul seemed to drift away whenever she so much as turned an eye toward them.
Many a time were the two women separated in body in the past months, but never before had it been in mind; not like this. The water laps only at her toes, and the wrench in her chest is so disgustingly heavy that it feels as if she cannot keep herself afloat.
But why? There had been others, there had been men. Men who simmered her affection to rot, men who turned their backs in the midst of afterglow and who grabbed for waist and took what they wanted. Getting over them was a matter of crossing through their names in her mind with the proverbial red ballpoint.
Why did the absence of @Silvertongue hurt her so gravely?
She was right; oh, how right she was, of how time and time again she'd tossed Wren aside like she was merely a lost dog waiting at a back door. Crowfeather; someone she would perhaps always be second to. She should be enraged, she should have crossed the name through long, long ago—
But images flash of those fluttering eyelashes and nimble legs, the hum of her voice. Of a life spent, whether it was here or somewhere, anywhere fucking else; a life of quiet evenings and tendrils of willows, of birdwatching upon a sunning rock and clumsy weird sex, of fitting blossoms behind ears and watching the gray pepperings of age trickle onto the other's face.
They were broken, yes, two souls frightened out of their skin and bones of one another and everyone else. Most conversations were ones laced with anguish and suffering and of not knowing how to help the other.
But Wren thinks of what things could look like in that rose-tinted future, of paws clasped together and reminiscing; of healing, of these memories of red palaces and warlords feeling as far off as a dream. Maybe it would never be so. But decidedly, she liked the idea of it, of that potential.
And never before had she thought that of anyone, and never again did Wren think she would feel it for anyone else.
She turns with her back pressed to the old magnolia; facing southward, eyes fixed upon the horizon, in case she happened to see a feathery silhouette come running.
She would wait for eternity if she had to.