Whitefish River & what a privilege to be but the remotest star!

a falling star fell from your heart
&  ʟᴀɴᴅᴇᴅ ɪɴ ᴍʏ ᴇʏᴇs

i screamed aloud as it tore through them

&  ɴᴏᴡ ɪᴛ’s ʟᴇғᴛ ᴍᴇ ʙʟɪɴᴅ

She had been in Shadow. Still remained;
It had stoppered the flow of her mind; sent her into a slumber of three dawns and three dimmenings. But as she crawled through the gloam to moon-of-her-life  (so weak, so worn), the sight of what the Dreadwolf’s desolation had wrought upon her brother, how he tread the Veil from within his own realms of repose and would not wake—

‘I... lost my brother. And myself. I think we lost each other. Died, in a way. Once beneath ze waters; twice within repose.’

“Coiva.”
ᴛ ʜ ᴇ    s ᴛ ᴀ ʀ s ! —
— ᴛ ʜ ᴇ    ᴍ ᴏ ᴏ ɴ !
“Nin s-sí?”
ᴛʜᴇʏ ʜᴀᴠᴇ ᴀʟʟ
been blown out:

you left me in the dark  . . . no dawn ; no day!
ɪ’ᴍ ᴀʟᴡᴀʏs ɪɴ ᴛʜɪs ᴛᴡɪʟɪɢʜᴛ
in the shadow of your heart

The tears which the heiress wept that night would leave her so spent, so without them that in the coming years she would all but forget when last she cried. That night, though, they swept like morning’s dew down her red cheeks, piercing and unforgiving salt, but the most real thing she’s felt since that horrendous evening.

&  in the dark, i could hear your heart beat, i
ᴛʀɪᴇᴅ ᴛᴏ ғɪɴᴅ ᴛʜᴇ sᴏᴜɴᴅ
but then, it stopped ; &  i was in the darkness,

sᴏ ᴅᴀʀᴋɴᴇss ɪ ʙᴇᴄᴀᴍᴇ.

And when she looked to the only other enduring constants in her life then  (the stars, the moon, the yawning, irrevocable night which ensnared them all), greeted them with a warbling whimper; when she swore to guide them as they would guide her, only then did Aurëwen look back to see that—
—her Dragomir lie before her, beyond her, beneath his own Shadow.

---

In the realm of reality, dream-stricken and lain before the quartz cavern, Aurëwen heaved; half-sight gleaming with tears of the past, unseeing as it smothered all sense and unassuming sophistication that slumber should’ve been.
She’d only wanted to wash the taste of poppies away; remove it from her tongue the way she’d like to remove all her night-terrors from her thread of memory.

But she hadn’t even made it into the quartz hold before she listed to her knees and into sleep. Before she shuddered with barely a breath, stale spittle lining her tissuey lips.
​And now it was she who could not wake—

8/4th. Just outside of Quartz Cavern.