It’s not dying I’m afraid of
She holds him, as tight and as long as he wants. There’s no rush, no telling him it’s okay, no telling him to grow up. It doesn’t matter how much you have seen or done, to take a life should never be easy. It gets easier, yes. She can snap the neck of any small creature as if it doesn’t break some part of her too, but it does. There are little wounds all over her heart from watching the life drain away from something even as stupid as a ningo, and though the cannibals of Whitebrim were hardly human anymore, to kill one would still take it’s toll.
She’s not really sure how much time passes as they stand there in the snow. What a strange sight they must be to anyone not from Halo, two people hugging in the middle of the tundra. The thought almost makes her laugh. Let them wonder, let them live on the outside of true understanding. Though they visit, they will never really know this place without calling it home for as long as the Hale’s have.
Eventually he speaks, and she doesn’t let go unless he seems like he wants her to. ”Do you want to tell me the whole story?” It is a question with room to say no. Perhaps it is easier not to, but perhaps it is better to get the thing out from start to finish, to leave it behind to be buried beneath the next snowfall. She isn’t sure, and so she gives him the choice.
She’s not really sure how much time passes as they stand there in the snow. What a strange sight they must be to anyone not from Halo, two people hugging in the middle of the tundra. The thought almost makes her laugh. Let them wonder, let them live on the outside of true understanding. Though they visit, they will never really know this place without calling it home for as long as the Hale’s have.
Eventually he speaks, and she doesn’t let go unless he seems like he wants her to. ”Do you want to tell me the whole story?” It is a question with room to say no. Perhaps it is easier not to, but perhaps it is better to get the thing out from start to finish, to leave it behind to be buried beneath the next snowfall. She isn’t sure, and so she gives him the choice.
weaver
it’s dying without ever having lived
