She’d had a place, and now what of it? The creature didn’t know how to feel or what to think about the fact everything had changed. That was a lie. She knew just how to feel and what to think—Salem was lost again. Change was the enemy, and here it was, knocking at her door. Weylin had let go his crown to another, and it made Salem’s sides hurt. She wanted what she knew and loved sitting as the jewel and the crown. The man had become another one of her brothers. Now there was someone new sitting at the top. Salem knew that he couldn’t be trusted.
Salem had gone so far as to distance herself from everyone… from everything. Seven and Pan were just sort of cut off, now. The girl felt strangely empty without them, but it was a feeling she held back. She’d stuffed it off into a corner and let it go because she could be on her own for now. She missed them… she ached. Salem had a strange way of aching. There was a ghost inside her, a demon just begging to be let out, a fire that couldn’t be put out—all of it raged on inside her. She just shoved it deeper and deeper away.
The pale eyed creature made her way across the ground with her strange gait, short but stiff. It was winter, and she’d gone back to being alone. Holed up in one of the dens that hadn’t been claimed by someone with actual pull on this place, she’d been all on her own. There weren’t any small enough to keep heat in effectively, but she’d made due. All Salem wanted was to take Seven and go fishing, but everything was frozen over. Even the falls that made this place so unique was dormant and quiet. Everything was too quiet. Salem would start to lose her head if she was on her own for much longer.
But she stayed away from the pack meeting. The girl hardly knew if she belonged here anymore. No, instead the pale creature stretched out on a thin patch of ice, one that had simply settled over grass that had frozen and refrozen. Everything seemed to have frozen, refrozen, and frozen again in this place. It set Salem ill at ease, to be surrounded by the bleakness and glamor of a stark white world. She didn’t want stark. The ghost longed for life once more.
keep the nightlight on
hound’s
inside the birdhouse in your soul
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