Broken Antler Fen i drive into corning, and all the spindles whine

Arcturus took Wraen's rejection surprisingly well - it was as if he had half-expected not to have success to begin with and this quiet desperation to cling onto someone made her realize that her decision was the right one. Relationships that lasted were not built on pity. If they were, then it meant only one side was carrying the most weight. And once the enthusiasm for saving someone dwindled, resentment replaced it. Or worse. Indifference. Unknowingly she had attempted to "save Arcturus" for the two years she had known him, trying to broaden his hopelessly narrow and conservative take on life, encourage him to stop focussing on the shadows inside Plato's Cave, but turn around and see the true colours and beauty of the world outside. 

She had learned by now that old habits were impossible to tackle. Just as Eljay would always be plagued by his insecurities, Arcturus was unable to look the world in the eyes for long. It scared him, it confused him. It deeply unsettled him and made him unhappy. And he turned his back on it, only to conjure new shadows of the world on that cave's wall. An illusion he felt comfortable living in and something that Wraen could never be part of. She was not strictly all or nothing person, not at this age, but the choice of, where she wanted to exist, was something she would never compromise on. And therein lied the difference between remaining his friend or becoming his mate. A friend implied having a choice. A mate meant melding into one and she did not wish to give up her world for a bleak reflection of it. 

Yet she felt she owed Arthur an explanation - she sensed and correctly so that he put all the blame on himself and with his black-and-white view on life he would now think that their friendship was over. Hardly so - he was dear to her as ever, yet she did not know, if it was ever going to be the same after this. If it was even healthy for him to remain here with a daily reminder of his supposed failure. "You've have to understand that... ever since I met you, you've been somewhat lost in life," Wraen told.  "You've grown up within a certain frame of life. A strict one too and you are a person, who thrives, when everything is clear-cut, simple, stable and not changing. It is not a flaw, it is a state that you feel most comfortable in. And there is an endearing naivety about you in believing that by agreeing to mateship all the problems you had would disappear, when, in fact, that hardest part begins right after you say "I do"."

Here it was her rambling and not being able to get straight to the point. Tell him that she refused for his own good? She had tried that before using different words and he had stubbornly refused to listen. Tell him that some time, somewhere there will be a girl to love him for who he was? Cliche and not exactly helpful, when one's heart has been broken. She had been in that exact position once and no amount of "it will be alright" had made her feel any better at that very moment. "What scares me, Arthur, is, how very little you care about yourself. You are willing to dissolve in another person's life readily just to escape from looking yourself in the eyes, seeing, who you are and what you are worth. You avoid coming to terms with your past, seeing good in, what you learned and how it shaped you. You rather prefer to give up your life for someone else and pretend that before them you did not exist. But you can't build your life on such a lie, just as you cannot put the burden on the other person to define, who you are, and have your happiness rely solely on them," she spoke from heart, voice full of emotion. 

"Happiness resides within you and only, when you have found it, you are ready to commit to someone else," she said. "You've come a long way, since we got to know each other. I enjoyed being your friend, your mentor and mother, but finding out, who are you without me, is that next big journey ahead of you and you have to walk it on your own and see, what awaits you."