Totoka River You are exactly what I want: kinda cool and kinda not

Lestan stared at Everett, and Everett stared back. At first, he could not read the look in the man's eyes. Tired? Defeated, maybe. How could he say? He hardly knew him beyond what Reverie had told him.

Reverie. Reverie.

Reverie, who now picked herself up as though she'd never threatened her husband with a threat far worse than leaving him. Lestan would leave -- but Reverie would die by her own obsessive will. To live without Lestan was worse than death for her.

And what would Everett have done, if he was in Lestan's place? Put in a place where someone's life fell on your decisions, where the threat of their death loomed at every corner, where a golden grip pleaded and threatened and would not let you go?

What would he have done but break?

And something did break in Lestan's eyes. Something dark and writhing. The children wormed away; Everett didn't even notice how the berry had passed from sister to brother, and would not notice until it was too late to do anything more.

His mind was numb and crowded all the same by a single accusation of a voice he only recognized as fire.

You were wrong.

Everett watched Lestan and Reverie walk away like broken cisterns spilling out. Watched, and wondered: how long until the cracks fully broke? How long until Lestan could take no more, and Reverie dashed herself in the agony of it all? And how much had he helped in that? Help convince Reverie that Lestan didn't love her! How much had he helped to push the final pieces into place? Why hadn't he stayed quiet? Stood by the man? Convinced his sister to stop?

But what more could he do now that wouldn't break them further?

Perhaps he was wrong.

Perhaps Lestan had once been a normal man, with normal hopes and feelings and fears.

Perhaps he had been all these things, until he'd been wrapped and swallowed up by the reverie.

Perhaps he was wrong.

Perhaps you are the one who is cruel.

Last from me as well!! Thanks all for the thread, I'll get up a post along the shoreline soon & tag the pups & Heda in it! <3