Page 16 of A Song of Air
It was about being lied to.
It was about how everyone was quick to push her into the fray to shoot at humans and use her magic to save others when they needed it, but the minute she stepped back into camp she was little more than a delicate flower.
She wasn’t a fucking flower.
She was a fuckingstorm.
“Forget it,” she grumbled, pulling away from him. It would do no good to stand in the middle of the forest and argue semantics. It wasn’t as if she could get her feelings across anyway. Not when she herself didn’t even know how to voice them, and he would refuse to listen even if she did. “We have to look out for Kurreen.”
She started to walk away, trying to drown out her mess of emotions and focus instead on her surroundings.
“Bryson, come on. Now you’re pissed at me. You know I’m only giving Arlo what he wants until I can take over. I need you to fucking trust me. I need you to let me protect you.”
I don’t need your protection.
The words caught in her throat, even though she wanted to scream them to the heavens. She wanted to move on from the subject. She wanted to go on patrol and hopefully find the Kurreen so she could shoot the bastards in their throats and then go off and brood somewhere else at the end of the day.
She didn’t want Ev touching her. She didn’t even want him speaking to her.
And she most certainly didn’t want hisprotection.
“Bryson!”
She huffed a breath. “Watch out on your left, Ev.” His feet stumbled as he veered away from the direction she said. He tripped and fell shy of the edge where she told him not to. “There’s a mushroom circle right there.”
Fizzling Cider and Oranges
Days of patrollinghad led them nowhere. At least, not until the twelfth day.
It was Bryson who caught the scent first. For days, they’d been trying to track animals of the area, hoping that if they found them, the Kurreen wouldn’t be too far behind. But they’d been sparse, few and far in between.
It had been nothing but dead ends, so when Bryson finally caught the scent of one, her body vibrated with excitement and anxiety.
“I can smell them,” she called out to Everett, breaking into a run. After days of inactivity, she felt a thrill at the possibilities to come. She didn’t notice her legs were moving or that she lost Ev until the silence of the forest swallowed her whole.
She should have waited for him, she knew that. They weren’t supposed to wander off alone. It was too dangerous. But Bryson was smart, and she knew it was better to take to high ground instead of staying on the forest floor. As quietly as she possibly could, she slipped over to a cluster of trees. Her palms faced the ground, and she dug deep inside herself, pulling out the Elemental magic that lived inside. It took only moments to create a strong gust of wind that lifted her into the air. Her magic helped her all the way to the top of a tree until she could step onto a thick, sturdy branch. It groaned beneath her weight but otherwise held still.
