Bramblepoint old wounds

For a moment, she did not answer. Turquoise gaze regarded him in silence, unreadable beneath the dim canopy. A ghost? Perhaps. Aneira shifted, the movement subtle; a weight adjusting rather than retreating. The forest air was thick with stillness, the kind that pressed against the ribs and whispered of things long buried. She exhaled, slow and steady, before speaking: 
„The past does not unmake the living,” a statement, not a correction, not a denial. She studied him now, gaze lingering on the edges of his presence; the set of his shoulders, the tired knowing in his voice. His grief had settled into his bones much like her own. That, at least, she understood. While memories shaped them, they are not defined nor destroyed by them. They remain whole; not undone, not lost, still existing beyond.
Her ears flicked, breaking the moment’s stillness, „And yet,” she added after a pause, voice quieter now, „the dead still follow.” A halt, followed by nothing; a simple truth left hanging in the hush between them.