The silence was incredibly soothing.
A few sparrows twittered in the naked branches of a scrubby little bush somewhere behind her. A soft, chilly breeze tousled her hair and patted her cheeks in intermittent bursts. The pond was frozen at the edges, layers of ice making a ring of silver crust that would not hold any great weight.
He wasn't here with her. She found immense comfort in this knowledge.
For hours, she sat by the water, her backside perched on an old, fallen tree. Her knees were drawn up close to her chest, elbows propped on the little shelf they made, and her chin rested in the cup of her palms.
She replayed the past several days in her mind. Faces scrolled through the slideshow of her thoughts. Smiles, laughter. She heard the sound of mugs and dishes clattering. The heat of the great hearth in the inn's common room had been so pleasant. She could almost feel it again, pulsing against her bare fingers and seeping through her garments, beckoning her to stay, stay, stay.
And she did. Longer than she had intended. Longer than she had stayed within the hedge-wall for years. Too long, perhaps.
The test was always whether she could empty her mind completely once the bustle of town was left behind. When all was still, and the only noises to invade her ears were those of crunching leaf litter, rippling streams, the deep snort of an alerted buck in the shadows. Was there anything else pressing at the edges of her thoughts? Anyone else?
Caring was the downfall, and she knew it full well. Placing stock in another's welfare before her own. The moment she began to care for Taraborn, she had lost her footing and fell into a near-fatal trap. The moment she began to care for Dagramir, everything went to slow, bittersweet pieces, and they nearly destroyed each other in their fumbling, yearning missteps. And the moment she began to care for Rowan, a gradual dismemberment of the mind and soul had occurred, a little at a time, until she didn't recognize herself at all anymore, and longed for death.
And so she sat, still and patient now. No voices to assault her ears and shatter her reverie. No laughing, no songs, no arguments, no nothing. Only peace.
She waited there, as if waiting for something to happen. And in truth, she was waiting for something. Her eyes slipped closed. She permitted the memories of those she had encountered lately. And with each one, she examined how it made her feel. She was waiting to see if any of them brought about that dreaded sensation. The desire to run back. To be near them again. The weakness of needing.
He was the last one to be granted entrance to her musings. She let herself see him in full, bold detail. His voice was replayed; various phrases and utterings that she'd heard. Remembering the way he smiled made her lips twitch in a weak mirror of the gesture. A minute became a half-hour, and then an hour. If anyone had happened upon her sitting there in the cold, they might think she had frozen to death sitting up.
As the pale, cloud-veiled sun neared the tree-line to the west, her turquoise eyes finally crept open again. Her chin adjusted slightly against her palm. There was no desperate longing now. No burning urge to stand up and turn east and run back to the village. She was surprised to find that she did not feel so. The serenity was strange and alien.
As frozen darkness descended over the hills, she smiled.
