Page 9 of A Song of Air
And so she would do it.
Invasive Thoughts
Her face tilted uptowards the open air, nose leaning to where she imagined the stars were. Her body was sprawled against a wooden surface, her hands patiently resting against her lower abdomen. Night had fallen, the temperature dropped low, and the cold clung to her bones.
The wind ruffled against her curls, pushing the strands against her freckled cheeks. She relaxed her body, sinking deep into the wood, and let her magic go astray against the night. It whipped and flew in varying degrees of harshness.
Beside her, her familiar ruffled her feathers.
You are acting petulant,she squawked.Stop that.
Bryson let out a breath and her magic eased back. Without the wind, she was forced to listen to the pounding silence of the night. She didn’t like it because torturous thoughts threatened to invade. Her magic picked up again, the wind ruffling the feathers of her familiar in a teasing way.
The hawk screeched with indignation.
“Calm down, you oversized chicken.”
The disrespect...
Bryson chuckled at their easy banter, but the sound died as easily as it had been born. She couldn’t stop thinking about the day, about the humans they’d killed and the Fae they’d saved. Soon, they would rehabilitate in the camp and slowly heal from their ordeal. At least their bodies, if not their minds.
She figured healing the mind was a longer process, one she didn’t even begin to understand. Though she herself had healed from the pain, there were some wounds that were invisible and hurt more than any cut upon flesh ever could.
She felt herself drowning in those wounds even now, in the chaos of her memories as they invaded her mind. How terrible was it that the last thing she would ever see with clear vision was the way her father and sister ran towards her right before the explosion? That the last thing she would clearly see was his terrified face?
If only she hadn’t been wandering, he wouldn’t have tried to save her. He wouldn’t have reached for her. He wouldn’t have used his body to shield her and her sister...
They would have died anyway. That was one thing she knew for certain. If it hadn’t been the explosion, it would have been something else. The camps, maybe. The hands of the cruel human soldiers. Sometimes, Bryson marveled at the fact that she herself was still alive.
As the thoughts crept along her mind, she felt an itching begin to form just beneath her skin. It was a burning anger that she felt could never be sated. A thirst for violence so potent, she sometimes frightened herself with the force of it. It battled against who she was and who she thought she should be, against the reality of the present and the teachings of her past.
She should move on from the tragedy, but it was that very same tragedy that gave her the ability to fight back and want for more. But even as she thirsted for it, Arlo’s voice commanded her mind like it always did.
“It’s not wise to want for more. That’s how revolutions are started.”
He was content with the lives they led. Thieving from humans, picking up Fae when they could. Arlo Blackwood didn’t aspire for more, and he expected the same from the rest of them.
