Serpent Lake enjarocharse

three times she wept, not because she felt, but because she could not feel at all. upon his every word she hung with belief, for there was no lie in any of him. but she should have been able to remember the feel of his arms around her, the press of his kiss — she should have been able to remember the sound of his laughter and feel the warmth of his eyes. love! over and over akavir described the different ways in which love had been stolen from her, robbed from her life. and this too was why she cried soft and quiet tears, as if she were only an observer, a movie-goer sitting alone in a theatre watching the black-and-white footage of her own existence roll over a screen. but silvertongue did not even have the haze! she did not have the graininess; she did not even have the memoried specter of a single thing akavir illustrated for her. destroyed. thieved. broken. broken. she had loved and she had felt; she had been a mother and she had been free. but it was not a cage-door which the dark man opened; there was no relief in the clatter of bars or the fact he held the key. she stood alone in the shade of that prison and found she was unable to walk over the threshold. for a long time after he had finished speaking, silvertongue sat slumped in the dirt where she had first knelt, below the watch of his eyes. she felt his gaze upon her and simply could not stir her own upward toward akavir again. he had gathered all these things in the years of their knowing; he had given of himself, and still this man who was not a stranger in the least still felt as though he was. at last silvertongue rose, and if he allowed, she raised a paw to trace the scar she had rent eons ago in his face. dizzily she wondered if — if feeling the want and the heat of him would remind her or only bring torment to the man who loved the remembrance of what this shell had meant to him. a jeweled cicada husk, yes, that was silvertongue, was belen. wife and mother and lover, only to draw breath now with such a void inside her that she understood with perfect clarity that she could no longer bear it. "will you ever be free of me, akavir?" and her voice was a crying prayer in a lake-lit night.