Page 88 of Fallen Thorns
“We’re losing you again, Arlo.”
That comment was not entirely unexpected.
“I’m trying.”So hard.
“I know you are, son. I know.” Marianne sucked in her lips until they formed a fine line of misery. “I’ll be honest, I’ve met very few people like you in my life, and even though I claim to have experience inmostthings, I still don’t always understand the best way to go about everything.”
I wanted to thank her for her honesty, but something inside stopped me.
“You’re a boy who sees the world through a very different lens than the majority of us, and I now see how that has affected the way you navigate things.”
That was a new one. “How so?” I tucked my hands into my coat pockets.
“I forget what it is like for mortals to live in this world. Carmen, bless her soul, has helped me keep track here and there but even she has spent so long surrounded by us that she’s not the best representative anymore.”
“So, you’re saying you don’t know what it’s like to be human anymore?”
She answered with a low shrug and a sigh of laughter. “I suppose I denied it for far too long.”
I mumbled my understanding as we continued our walk down onto the riverbank, the distant drilling and groan of machines drifting through the air as we approached the bottom of the steps.
“I can help with that, maybe?” I tried to suggest. I’d never been good at comforting and offering assistance or solutions, but I was ever the people pleaser.
Marianne smiled distantly at this, but I deduced that wasn’t necessarily where she intended on going with the conversation.
“Your friend, Rani, exhibits it so well. She’s the most human person I’ve ever met, even when I once was one.”
“How do you mean?”
Rani.
“She reads people, so intimately and in detail. She adapts and she understands, even when she doesn’t think she does. She has a heart of gold, and she always speaks her mind, regardless of her surroundings. That’s such a lost talent in our world.”
I smiled fondly. “She is one of a kind.”
“You’re lucky to have her.”
“I am.”
“She helps Carmen in many ways too, which I’m sure you’ve noticed.”
“I have.”
We crossed the bridge over onto the narrower path, manoeuvring around fallen thorn branches.
“I know Carmen can be difficult sometimes, and I apologise for the way she acts around you.”
“She has every right. She watched her family die in front of her, dead by the hands of someone you so openly welcomed into your community. Someone who was trusted and admired and doted on. Evenpraised. Someone who should not have held such evil in their nature and yet still succumbed to the urges.” I brushed under my nose discretely. “It sounds all too familiar if you ask me.”
The shy Arlo Marianne obviously thought she knew held back no longer; I had nothing left to lose, so I voiced what I’d been thinking for a long time.
Marianne sighed. “And that’s what has been worrying me. You aredifferent,and it scares me. I can openly admit that. The whole story around your rebirth… Lucy, if that even is her real name, she’s behind this, she has to be, and then you werechosenby something else entirely.”
It hit me like a gut punch, but it was true.Did she know the whole truth, though?
“Mars saved youand hates themself for leaving you alone to fend for yourself without actively intervening, and I hate that I let them. We forgot you were still so very human. You still are, in a way.”
“You think so?”
