Westward

Chapter 8

////Totally got tired of this story by this time. They were gonna go off and find this other character who has witching abilities. Than Aowyn was gonna get pregnant. Then The other witchy character was going to be the recruiter for war while these two sorta faded out and stuff while they raised the baby. Than there was gonna be a war between these two countries blah blah blah. Then the baby was gonna be born with schizophrenia and the witch was gonna decipher the voices and it would do all this stuff to help them win and stuff. Moved onto other things and stories. This chapter is crap. but its gonna be the last one so sorry not sorry. Thanks for making it this far tho.//// -Rowan

Her center of balance shifted and Aowyn was confident that this was the end. A thousand thoughts exploded in her head. Finally, finally she would get to be with her family. The pain would go away. All her scars would vanish. Never again would she have to be let down by this wretched, unforgiving earth. Would it hurt to hit the ground? Would her last breathing moment be like flying? She had always wanted to be a bird so it was so fitting that she would die flying. In this moment, she imagined her broken body at the bottom of the canyon. How nice it would feel for her soul that was fighting so hard to be free would be unleashed from her limited body. But maybe there were solutions? Maybe there was a way to fix everything? It would be much to difficult though.
She felt the sting of salty tears fly down her cheeks, bloodstained hair clinging to every drop. This was all in a fraction of a second, these thoughts, her feet had hardly left the ground yet because in that moment, strong arms stopped her under the arms and stunted her fall.
Aowyn flipped around, desperate to wiggle free, and slapped Jay square in the face, making her hands burn and crack. She managed to elbow him in the throat just as he hauled her over the side, miraculously and unfortunately not tumbling over the cliff. He dropped her clumsily onto the dirt and felt at his windpipe, rubbing it and gasping. Aowyn scrambled to the empty air, now desperate. Jay, still coughing, pounced on her right arm and lifted her away. She screamed and cursed, using language that she had picked up from the nearby alehouse, kicking at every inch of him that she could reach.
"LET ME DOWN YOU COW!" That was one of the nicer insults. He was trying to not hurt her, that was easy enough to tell, but it must have been quite difficult to not try anything harsh. Aowyn was determined to make it harder.
"IM GONNA KICK YOUR ARSE TO WALES IF YOU DON'T GET YOUR HANDS OFF ME!" She punched him in the shoulder which did almost nothing as they made steady progress away from the edge. She used profanity like a battle cry, like ammunition, though it didn't do much. He had her facing away from him as Jay stumbled backwards towards the camp. As she tried to slap him, Jay caught her hand and held both of her arms up leaving only legs as weapons. Aowyn dragged her heels into the dirt as an act of exhausted submission. Then unexpectedly, she lifted her knee and connected it as hard as possible into Jays left side, right where the bullet had entered. He immediately released her hands to instinctively clutch the wound.
She cried out, managing to stand on her damaged feet, practically falling to the edge. Time, for her, was slow as the sun around the earth. Aowyn brushed the red stained hair from her eyes, peeling the suctioned ends from her cheek. Her mother's form appeared just as Aowyn thought it.
Think before you jump, doll.
Aowyn hardly thought. She didn't have time. Jay was still gasping and cursing between coughs about fifteen feet away. She flipped her head around so Aowyn's head hung over the edge. Mother held her arms out as if waiting for an embrace. Just far enough that Aowyn wouldn't reach without falling. Why can't I jump? Her thoughts screamed at her. Just do it! Get away! But Aowyn's mind tried to push off, her body pulled her back to safety. Two sides of her mind battled until some foreign part of her told her to just kill both sides. To jump. Everything came back to that single action. Nothing made sense.
But she couldn't fall.
Mother's eyes glittered with sadness; a temping desperation.
Please, doll. Aowyn wanted to cry but couldn't bring herself to do it.
"Sorry Mum, something... I just... I don't know what it is. I'll be there with you someday. I'm so sorry."
(Insret ghost relations name) eyes didn't stay endearingly understanding but instead, changed. Something shifted in those small lashed eyes; an expression that she had never seen before. It is hard to describe, like trying to explain color to a blind man. Some thing so purely black. Evil, maybe. But not just the viciousness of a wild animal. This was much more. Something so decayed and rotten that it could black out the sun at mid-day. An continuous silent recklessness that leaves you exhausted through mental work. Something so darkly wise that it knows the last thought before every death. Each secret of a murderer.
(Insert name (for Eleanor)) felt fear blind her as she watched her (ghost relation) shrivel into something so grotesquely compact. The same way that hair burns. It was hard to look at though she couldn't look away. It is hardly describable. Imagine the smell of smoke alive and living, that certain scent of nothing left. The taste of blood and steel on a cold day. That indescribable swoop of fear that feels so overpowering it creates physical pain. It was an animal that seemed that no mind could envision or process, menacingly pure evil. The darkness vanished.
This was not her mother. This was the mask of the devil.
Aowyn screamed as her vision turned white, Jay tackled her from behind, pulling her far away from the edge. He held down her arms but Aowyn did not try to fight. She stared at nothing, maybe crying, maybe dying, maybe this was just the torture of life. Aowyn found herself hearing things through the white that clouded her eyes. Nothing describable.
She seemed to wake up, though she had never slept. As if her whole life she had been in a sort of lucid sleep and just now, everything brightened, every flaw in the world now seemed like a candle in the dark; the only visible thing. Jay held her close though Aowyn never remembered him letting go of her arms like manacles. His arms wrapped around her like a friend. In a way that wasn't fake like Chester's. He spoke in calming words, so unlike the falsely sweet, poisoned honey-like words that Scarlet girl spoke. Just things that hit so close to her heart that it calmed the fear out. Slowly. Like sobering-out a drunken man.
"Miss, please. Your fine. Everything is fine. We'll go if you want. Whatever you want." He muttered to himself things that were hardly distinguishable, every once and a while a "Thank God." Or "Thank you."
She cried and didn't fight. Once the tears had drained all energy from her, she had to just close her eyes, trying to block all the voices telling her of everything she has done wrong.
"Miss? What did you see?" He spoke these words tentatively but, he obviously knew that something had happened.
" I saw..." She faltered, terror strangulating the words. "I saw the devil himself!" She convulsed and remembered nothing of time. Jay murmured things in her ear again rubbing her hands together for warmth.
"In my old home, there were cracks all over the ceiling. We were going to fix them after the winter months but we never got the time. Even though it let snow and cold inside, in the morning it also let light in. When the light hit down on the bedpost we knew it was time to get up and feed the chickens. When it shone straight down, it was noontime."
Aowyn sniffled, not sure what to think of his rambling .
"I would have closed those holes the moment I saw them, they let the rain and cold and darkness inside." Her stomach tightened as a wave of terror started to drown her. He shifted his chin to the top of her head.
"But if you block the bad things out, you block the good too."
"If it's broken, it has to be fixed! Somthing just can't go unattended forever, as long as the cracks could get bigger. It just doesn't even make sense why you are blathering on so about this."
"Because when we filled in those broken parts; when we realized too much bad was leaking through. Our home was just mediocre then. Nothing special. Not much light, not much dark. Just-"
"Just the right amount of everything." Aowyn finished.
"Don't you see Mrs. Dulay? You are this house. We are this house. Without the cracks, nothing can get through, no happiness or sadness. It is nearly impossible to keep out just one. It's either everything or nothing at all. Nothing at all would be very grey and dull, don't you think?"
"Maybe- no- I don't know. How can you be so happy about it all? This life is an impossible puzzle that we all have the chance to figure out. I certainly am not a part of this chance. You are too damn metaphoric, and I am actually falling for it." Aowyn threw these words at him like the punches previously, but like before, they did nothing. She wrangled a hold on her senses and pulled her head out, glaring him straight in the eye. His eyes smiled while his lips did not, it was a bit disconcerting. Under his sunken eyes it looked like bruises had symmetrically formed. She schooled her expression, determined to hide the quiver in her tone.
"I didn't jump in the first place because something was holding me back. I don't want to think it was you and your silly ambitions. I am still not sure to be honest. The way you say it makes it sound so..." She didn't want him to know that he was influencing her, but she needed it out. " So stupidly appealing. And easy. That's all I wanted. For thinks to simplify." Her expression had involuntarily changed to a particular sadness that she couldn't get out of. Her face felt wet and sticky, extra soft and hot. Aowyn hated it. She hated it. While turning away and carefully rubbing her cheeks with her forearm, Jay put both of his long-fingered hands on her shoulders, swiveling her form to face him again. There was a definite determination in his expression to put a point across. A low brow and half a squint with tight lips that were whitening. A chunk of hair stuck up by his hear, Aowyn had to resist the urge to either smooth it down or yank it out. She saw her reflection in his sapphire eyes, it was a bit disconcerting. She looked away.
"Hey, it won't be easy. That is clear. But I know we can do it. There is a city far away, Westwick. We might be able to find a way to win Sarason over. To be like the heroes in the stories." He licked his lips and grinned a cute side smile, almost like he believed it. She swallowed a bit of blood from her mouth and turned away, imagining those saviors. They did the smallest thing, used a bit of logic to take down the foe, forged a mighty double-edged longsword from the fire fueled by the bodies of their enemies. Aowyn always used to think that way, used to think that she could be like that someday. She wished for pain and suffering so she could be like them have something to fight for. But this was not what she wanted, everything was different now, this was not a heroes life.
"We can't all be heroes, I can't find it in myself to be able to do that. It's selfish but I don't think there is any way. I honestly just want to go away for good." She shook her head disparagingly and looked into Jay's hardened gaze. "I am sorry. There is nothing to be done of this war."
He seemed to feel her, to actually understand.
"Yes. Maybe this optimism has gone too far." He nodded solumnly, and then tore his gaze away into the morning light. The sun lit up his facial features, creating a silver edge on his dirty blonde hair.
"Look at the morning, it will always come back." He looked a bit melancholy at the cliff edge. As if the same voices were calling him there. Aowyn bit her lip and spoke,
"Your not seeing the horizon, only the height." She rested a finger under his chin and pushed up, raising his sights to the glowing aurora.
"There. Look at the newborn mountains and the golden clouds." He twisted the sadness off his smile and added,
"The sun matches your hair. It's so bright that it looks white." Jay lifted a greasy strand and held it up so it hung limply on the sunrise. There was a red tint on either far side, matching the blood stains on the tip. She bit her lip and for once in a long time had to resist a laugh. For how insane they were.