Softly my thoughts /
whispered invisible words.
☼
The nagging distaste of uncertainty accompanied Hälla well into their journey, leaving her blind to the fortuitous grace that her tomb had, perhaps mercifully, been upon the lip of the desert. Her steps had taken her deeper into its embrace, but with her red-cloaked companion taking the helm, it wasn’t long before the sea of grass unfurled. A tremendous juxtaposition from the dunes they had fled, she noted, almost instantaneously, the herds of bison that swam through the fading browns and greens of foliage.
Solterra had been willfully ignorant to the turning tide of the season, and insofar as the waking woman might’ve known, summer had held the rolling sands within its heated thrall. The balm of a kissing wind was the first change she felt, accompanied by the rustling sound of distant, whispering fields. The twitter of animals was a song further off, and yet one that nonetheless spoke to her in ancient tongues, weaving tales of things long forgotten.
Two stories lay within the corridors of her thoughts, and the bits and pieces that unraveled with each silent step caused her gut to roll, a quivering nausea that caused the world to tilt upon its axis. Only her quiet as they walked betrayed the wrongness that came and went, an unsteady, incessantly lapping wave—
She was no moon in comparison to her turbulent sea. It did not heed her pull, her call; it sloshed as violently as it pleased, threatening to drown her. Only the sheer will of her person kept her head afloat, the stubbornness of fearful pride serving as a buoy amid the squall. And if her mind was the sea, her memories were undoubtedly a storm.
They came in bolts of lightning; they roared in groaning thunder; they chilled her to the bone with pelts of hale and rain.
But Hälla pressed onward unflinchingly, her chin lifted, and her wearied steps unfettered. The prairie was a new horizon to which he guided her, a port to house a woman that both knew it and did not. It was frustrating, it was humiliating—it was almost enough to rouse tears of frustration to her moony eyes.
Almost. And yet, nowhere near enough.
Hälla knew this place, and yet she did not know it. It begged her to remember, the tender grasses kissing her fetlocks with overwhelming compassion, and her silence turned stilted. Quick bursts shattered the reverie of stillness she’d fashioned from woe, and her teeth ground together as she grabbed hold of the memories that sought to take root, and, with vengeance, ripped them up.
She would not remember. Not until she knew what was true—what was true, and what was Arjun’s lie.
She would not remember, because she knew hurt lay in remembering.
The darkness of the tomb had caused enough hurt.
“Stop here,” she grunted, her cloven hooves coming to pause without ceremony within the middle of the prairie, the sun having softened its glow as it began its descent—they’d walked all day, and the rolling plains were mercifully cool.
Hälla was silent as she tipped her head towards the distance, surveying their surroundings with deliberate uncertainty.
“Why you would step beyond that border,” she began, shaking her head. “And into the desert escapes me.” Even if she knew, her bones knew, her blood knew, that the sands had fashioned her. At least in this life.
Something else had been nagging at her every step of the way, watching the sweat bead upon his skin as she shadowed his steps.
“And why you would wear that cloak the entire way,” her lip twitched, the idleness of her conversation no doubt meant to steer her from her thoughts. The words were empty—they were pointless. And she knew that.
They could’ve parted ways now. Hälla didn’t point that out, at least not in plainer words. The distraction was still welcome.
“Is Delumine what awaits you, then?”
