who we are and all that we're trying to be
The end then – quickly, befitting the way they maneuver and rampage, turning and twisting to come back the way he’d come too (now with more substantial things to consider and seethe against, infinitely uncertain of where bards should traverse in the wake of moments to come). Except her final words echoed and bounded, enough to make his cranium incline over his shoulder, muffle the smallest, minute half-smile. “Yes. I know.” He understood the wake of different ideals splitting apart, fumbling, fizzling, or enraging, how things drifted despite certain beginnings. He comprehended the wake of a mother’s love, even if not shared by blood, and how easily it could be lost, the torturous pang of loss grating and grinding, clawing and seething. He fathomed that Amalia still had Wessex, and Wessex still had Amalia, even if the world had led them down divergent paths. Even amongst disaster and ruin – he’d seen it amongst the debacle of the temple, the Wraith tending to the Shield. Where they would go and wander from here would be only more unwinding additions to the chaos, with Amalia striving for life, and with Wessex tending to the Voice’s requirements.
Deimos had more to say: that Amalia was no longer that little girl, that her motives were determined and resolute, that there was a radiant, emboldened prowess to her methods, that all those years of reserve and apprehension were unfurling, unwinding, in small shards. “But she is more than that now,” and they’d have to grow with her, or be left behind. The Sword’s piercing eyes wandered back to her, a careful arch to his brow, and then his head turned again, back to where he’d come from; the acknowledgments passed, the gratitude extended. One more means of ensuring mending and assuaging for a being who only craved life, despite all the other irreverent events spiraling against her.
{-FIN}
It takes dying to know
How to live as ghosts
