Eternal ✓ [A Rapunzel Retelling]

Chapter 8

⊰Eternal⊱

.•*•.VIII.•*•.

     ༄The horse slows down and we stop by a lake. We've been riding for some time now and my legs and my back is hurting from being in that position for a long period of time. I did not want to say anything since I know he does not want to stop often. Caelestinus did not complain. He did not say anything much while we were riding. I wanted to ask him so often when we would stop and where it is that we are going to. I did not ask though. Afraid to, I suppose. I find that I do not know what to talk about.

It is much simpler when it comes to writing a letter to him. This is something that I've never done before in my life, and I fear saying the wrong thing. He will perhaps get angry or hurt. When he reads my letters I do not know how he reacts or how he feels when reading them, it is better to not see it. He gets off the horse and then offers me a hand. "We will stay here for some time, then we will be back on the horse. We still have some way to go" He tells me.

"How long until we arrive there?" I ask him. My feet, especially my thighs are numb which is something that is unfamiliar with me. Pain is one of the things that I was forbidden to feel, my mother said that I was too special to be in pain. Much like my blood, she said that my skin and my bones are important. That I am important. More than I could ever realize and that I would never be able to understand if she tried to explain to me. She did that often, told me things and then did not explain, so I would never understand it and I think she never wanted me to find out.

He walks with the horse over to the lake where he starts to drink out of it. "We should be able to reach there soon. The horse needs rest and so do we" He tells me. I nod my head. I look at the horse, it's incredible that the horse trusts us enough to allow us to ride it and lead the way. It does not stray away with us when we are on his back. "This place that we are going to, what is it like?" I ask him.

He gestures for me to sit down with him by the lake. I walk over to him and sit down. My body is aching all over and sitting down is good and yet it feels worse at the same time. "The last time I was there I was a young boy. We spent most of the time inside. There was another boy, my friend. We snuck out one night. Wanted to see the beauty that our parents talked about. That night was the best of our lives. We saw everything" He says.

I watch as his eyes light up when he talks about it. Unlike the sorrow that my mother would give when she talks about the past, his are filled with happiness. The way that he tells me his story makes me smile. In his letters he always spoke about another boy which is his friend. They have been friends since they were small, grew up close to one another and played in the same area. "It was incredible to see. We had never seen anything like it before. It was the first place that I ever visited" He tells me.

"We went everywhere that night. I can still remember how my stomach ached from laughing that entire night. Though, then the world does demand that when all good things take place, bad things must balance it out. When our parents found out about it and found us, they separated us for a couple of years. We lived near one another, but we had guards that kept us away. When we were older, we stopped trying to be near one another, and now we barely speak" He says. I gasp and without thinking I take his hand.

"That must have been very difficult, to lose a friend in such a way" I say to him with sorrow. I have never lost a friend before, yet I do know that it must hurt inside. I can understand that. He chuckles. "The world wanted us to be separated. It demanded that from us, and we had to give it" He tells me. I give him a confused look. "I do not understand. You said in the tower that Witches are bad and yet you believe in the same thing that they do" I tell him. "Why is that?" I then ask him.