In the end, she was learning, all goodbyes seemed the same. Felt the same. Ended the same. And she was beginning to think that the silence from the beginning of their short conversation was almost preferable to that which followed.
She doesn’t say anything as the girl turns and trots abruptly away, doesn’t react to the placating kiss she presses light as a feather to her cheek. Maret smiles — like the trained doll that she sometimes feels she is, dipping her head respectfully and making no effort to stop her (no matter that she may have wanted to.) She only watches, feeling her heart fall like a bird shot from the air in her chest, bang bang, dead and gone. She watches and wonders to herself if it would have felt this way had she stayed home, had she simply smiled and kept walking and saved herself the disappointment.
Later she might worry that it was the last question she asked, or — even worse — that it was the differences between them. That she was too bland, too spring, too untested to be a friend to. Maret wouldn’t blame her — after hearing her story, she might have felt the same had their roles been reversed.
With the summer sun drawing lines of sweat down her sides (all the better to pretend the salt on her face was from the heat alone), she turns and walks into the waves. Her magic pulls the fragile bits of water from the salt-spray air and crystallizes them, draws them to her like a shield and halo.
And as the water rises past her shoulders she realizes how much she hates the end of summer, and its goodbyes.
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