No I don't need no help, I can fuck it all up myself

land over land
creeping and crawling

The offer settled over Wren like sunlight, warm enough to thaw something she had kept clenched tight inside herself. For a moment, she could only stare at Colt. Her fingers tightened unconsciously around the reins as Burger continued his slow, steady pace beneath her. Hak Etme. She bit the inside of her lip, anticipation and excitement flushing her cheeks. What was waiting for her here, after all? A borrowed bed in an inn that would eventually ask her to move on. Streets that still felt foreign beneath her feet. The hollow ache of trying to rebuild herself in the ruins of something she could not even fully remember loving. Stormbreak had been safety because it was all she had known, but now even that was gone, shattered open and scattered.

Wren looked ahead as Beans moved through the grasses, Colt easy and certain in the saddle. A laugh escaped her then, breathless and small at first, almost surprised to exist. “I think, uh,” she started, shaking her head once as though the thought still startled her while she spoke it aloud, “I think I want to go.” Wren glanced down at Burger’s neck, reaching forward carefully to stroke her hand against the gelding’s mane before lifting her gaze back toward Colt. “We can build the sandcastles, and if they fall apart…” Her shoulders lifted slightly, “yhen maybe we just build them again.”

FIN

like the sea over sand
still I follow heartlines on your hand

Wren