The Bracken Woods She

He refuted her and Masque’s temper flared. She started to rise to her feet. Why don’t you respect me? her inner voice bellowed, its clamor so loud that she forgot to follow through on the impulse to growl at him again. Her leg screamed too. She sank.

You can’t help me with this, she told him gruffly. Losing mother was hard enough. And now this.

She knew he probably thought she meant the fight. She did, though only in part. Masque didn’t know how to articulate the rest. If she couldn’t sort it out for herself, how could she possibly explain it to him? Never mind that it was almost certainly fueled by some feminine energy he could never understand.

But now that she’d started talking, she confessed in a wretched whisper, I suddenly want all these things I’ve never wanted before. It doesn’t make any sense. It’s not me. But it is me, Mul. It is me.