Primal

Chapter Twenty-Five

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Chapter Twenty-Five

 

There is sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness but of power. They are messengers of overwhelming grief and of unspeakable love. ~Washington Irving

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The air was cold on their bruised skin, and the flaky white snow swirled around their warm bodies as they stood on the edge of the cliff. Their bodies stood closely together, trying to warm their numb skin in the bitter breeze. The path to get to this point was long, and she still wasn’t certain that she fully trusted the man standing next to her. Though she might not trust him, he had risked his life for her on multiple occasions and there was no one else left in her life. After Noor had lost Yuna, she felt like she had nothing. When Zander was taken as well, that was when she realized that she truly did not have a single person. She watched her last feather fall off of her wing and slowly float down into the water, her face paling at the sight of it joining the rest of them. Finally, after many seasons, her last prophecy had become true. The thin bones that once held all of her brown quills hung uselessly at her side, unmovable by herself and only controlled by the swirling wind. Eventually they’d fall off too, or more likely be cut off by the man now standing at her side, but for now she could only see herself as a skeleton. She was almost fully dead on the inside, and now her outward appearance fully matched the one she wished to portray. “You’re wrong. I hope you know that you are wrong.” She said, her face unmoving besides her lips, barely parted, twitching as the words came out.

 

“And what am I wrong about?” Aeron questioned, his hand intertwining with hers. She ripped her fingers away, crossing her gaunt arms over her chest that was still coated in dried blood from only a few hours before.

 

“I am not brave. When you saved me from falling, you called me brave. It was a lie.” She said, her breath so warm that her words formed into a smoke that the brisk wind carried away. “If I was brave, I would have faced these nightmares alone. It was the path I chose, and the path that I always thought would save me. But I’m a coward, and because of my cowardice I couldn’t let myself do it alone.”

 

“I’d never let you have the glory of having won your battles alone anyways.” He muttered, letting a soft chuckle escape his lips. The tension between their awkward exchanges was unavoidable despite all of the time they had recently spent together. His feeble excuses for lightening the mood only made the air around the atmosphere around them feel impenetrable.

 

“But that’s only because you’ve never felt fear. Not like I have.” Noor said, glancing at him from the corner of her eyes. “You fought against the duties that you assigned yourself. What has become of me? Do you not care about my destiny? That was the real battle. That was our real battle. And you abandoned it! That does not show fear. I was the one stuck with my fate.” She turned away, her gaze following back down to the rushing waters. She was correct. He knew that every single word she spoke was true. He had, in fact, abandoned her in every way that one looked at it. She was left alone on that mountainside, screaming after him, begging for him to return to her. And like he wished, he just continued to run away.

 

His eye watched her now, his eyebrow raised in slight confusion at her selfish remark. Just because he had left her did not mean that he didn’t know what fear was. His heart was tinted by fear whenever she came close to danger, whenever he thought of her unhappy, whenever he faced death head on. “I do know what fear is, mind you. Fear is when I saw you hurt, bleeding under that tree, and I knew I was just one step too far away to save you from the final hit. I was powerless. What’s being alone to that?” He said, and finally she actually turned her face to look at him. Her stubborn expression faltered for a second at his words before she turned into stone once again.

 

His mind stretched out to her, begging her to stay with him. At one point, he saw her as an entire kingdom. Now all he saw was a kingdom in ruins. If there was no one to stand and fight for her there and now, who would she find a home within? Her life had been shred into bits and pieces, but she was still standing tall. She only had one more question that had been lingering since the day before he left, the question wavering inside of her mind for weeks before he could finally answer. “Admit it.” She said softly, turning away from him to look out at where the water dropped off into nonexistence.

 

“Admit what?” He said, confused by her sudden proclamation. Noor had always been hard to read, but now that she had lost her final feather she was farther gone than just sullen. She was lost, almost completely gone. He had to find a way to get her to stay on this planet with him. After protecting her from her fates for so long, he wasn’t sure that he knew what to be without her.

 

“That you do care. Even though you told me that you want to forget what I said, tell me how you truly feel about me, right now.” She said, choking back some kind of noise that was about to leave her lips. Of course he cared. He had been through so much for her, all of that wasn’t for nothing. Why would he have to say it to her, did she not trust him? He leaned forward, letting his fingers brush against her skeletal wings. They were rough, and felt feeble in his strong hands. So much time seemed to pass between their sentences, each intake of breath extending their pauses.

 

After some time, he decided to speak first. "I love you too, Noor." Aeron whispered, and this time he knew that he almost meant it. He wasn’t running away anymore, he was facing his problems head on like he should have from the beginning. He let go of her wing, turning her tiny frame around to look at her face. He pulled out the golden band from earlier then, knowing that it was the same one he watched her talking to so many months before. It was Yuna’s ring, glittering under the bright sun. He slid it on to her finger, touching the back of her hand gently with his lips. “I know it doesn’t mean much to you, but I said it. And that should count for something.” There were two, small tears that trickled down her pale cheek. One was for her and the other, he knew, was falling down her face for him.