The Tangle you love me but you don’t know [m]e

AWH TY

she was a drooping flower beneath his inquiry, filled with an emabrrassment that wilted her confidence.  a flush rose to her face as her ears splayed, which she brushed off with an effortless brookstone laugh.

no, she rejoined, i did not take part. she'd taken her fury out on lazuline instead. her sister was the only one to have fallen victim to the deepest vitriol cerulean was capable of cultivating. she hoped it was behind her. she left the thought behind as he asked her something else.

they are very different from me,

but she didn't know how to describe it. there was their dynamic before they had come to the wilds, and the one that had developed after. when compared, they were so stark in contrast it felt as if she was living a separate life from the one she'd led before.

it used to be different. we were inseparable. but once we came here, everything was fractured, and it happened so fast.  the corner of her lip quivered. there was a time we meant everything to one another. but i led us here, and lazuline blames me for what happened to viridian. ironic, in her opinion. she'd had nothing to do with it.

but until we came here, i wasn't very developed. a pause. in the truest sense, the skillful sense, yes, but also emotionally, i think. she didn't quite know how to explain what it was to rise into consciousness, to grow into oneself.  i did not have a sense of agency. thankfully, that is something you can develop. she had done so here, with him.

she paused again to choose her next words with care. i am grateful to have come here, no matter what that might mean for anyone else.  it felt selfish to say aloud. but it was unequivocally true, and she would not allow for guilt to tarnish her integrity.

her turn to bare her soul was broken when ego spoke of his family. she watched his frosted edges melt away into the story of his boyhood. she was inclined to believe that he would not often reveal himself in this way, and she savored his sentiment despite the low-level ache his words left her with.

despite the amount of ground she had covered, she didn't recognize their names, but she filed them away with obsessive intent. with her social network, she was only bound to be a few degrees of separation away from anyone. but regarding the mountain, she turned to him with soft eyes and said you may still come to claim it, if that is what you desire. there were many things that would soon be within his grasp,

much like the deer that lay ahead.  they were in sight, not yet in earshot.

he asks her the question she doesn't want to answer, but she makes space for the discomfort she feels rising. she had already said so much, that this was likely not as painful for him as it would be for her.

we didn't have time to prepare, she answered. then she supposed that deserved some kind of explanation. i haven't told anyone this. but lazuline is an aspiring healer. and how she would've hated to have been characterized that way. viridian is an accomplished one, who vouched for her.  when our leader became ill, zuli was allowed to treat him, and her treatment cost him his life. she had mistaken one herb as another, and the easy mistake had cost them everything they had known. it was not long before she was accused of premeditation. i begged them both to run away with me before we were exiled.

she fell into a pocket of swallowing silence and turned his words about. do you still feel that way? cutting close. about your father? realization. you don't have to answer, she followed quickly, if you don't want to. but she would make her curiosity known.