Blood Memories [Last of Elves book 1] (NaNoWriMo 2014)

Twenty-Four: Naameh

Naameh

He scares me

I don’t understand him. I can’t even pretend that I understand him. His moods change so quickly, and without any reason, it seems.

I suppose my wish was granted – in a way. I know what the elves once were to the land. Almost the lifeblood.

And the lifeblood is nearly gone.

No wonder the land is dying. No wonder the goddess is sending me the dreams that she is. Of a land sick and dying, with Panthera in the middle. He is the reason to whether we all live or die.

He decides our fate.

I don’t know what to think of him. Whether to trust him, or whether to stay wary of him. My head speaks for one, my heart for another. I want … I want to trust my heart. I want to trust the feelings that are growing for him, and that he seems to be returning.

He was so rough, yet so gentle. So fiercely protective.

I saw the emotion in his eyes when he spoke of what had been. Heard the emotion in his voice when he spoke of the earth, and the ancients. I wish that humans as a race weren’t so hasty with their accusations, with their distrust. But I cannot change that. No matter what happens, there will always be someone who doesn’t trust them, and that distrust will always spread, until no one trusts anyone but themselves, if they trust at all.

He needs to live.

I wonder what he’s doing right now. I left in such a hurry. I was scared, terrified, of what he did, of what I was feeling, of what I saw in his eyes, heard in his voice.

It scared me too much. I didn’t know what to do.

So I proved him right. I ran. I am a coward. He’s right. I ran from him because he scared me, and I fear what the goddess is asking me to do.

I don’t know whether she is asking me to kill him or save him. All I know is that he is the key.

He is the answer to whether we live or die.

I want him to live. I feel … different … whenever I’m with him. Lighter, freer, more relaxed. Like I don’t have to be in charge, or decide anything.

I don’t know if it’s because he is so rude and surly and stubborn. So determined not to bow to me and obey my every command without thinking about it.

I like it.

It’s a challenge. He’s forcing me to think about what I’m doing, and why, and whether there is another way of doing it.

Yet still, he is rekindling the longing for the town that I thought I’d crushed. I can never go there again. They say that the streets are dangerous. I’m too valuable to the town and to the goddess to lose now. It’s why I am never alone.

I hate it.

I want to sneak out to the streets, with no guards, no one to follow me, and deprive me of my former life. I remember little bits – going to the markets, watching the sun rise, cleaning the house, making the clothes.

It was the life I used to know. I want to know the life Panthera used to know.