The faint connection that had stirred between them strengthened with the words Canis spoke. As he talked of feeling like life was stagnant and needing change, she found herself nodding in agreement, golden-brown eyes going a little brighter. It was wonderful to feel understood, even with just a few words exchanged. Encelia had never experienced it before, always isolating herself despite the size of the Badlands herd.
But it was when Canis said softly, I don’t even think I said goodbye, that Encelia’s smile slowly slipped off her mouth. She nodded again, only it was smaller, and her gaze became somewhat far away. She reflected on fleeing from the Badlands that morning. She had assumed her family wouldn’t care if she disappeared into nothing, but what if she was wrong? Should she have said something?
“I didn’t either,” she admitted in an equally small, soft voice. It held some regret, but not a lot. “I don’t know if they would have cared.” She added. It was probably unfair to say, given the way her mother had been trying so hard to show her that she cared for her this past year now that she had Kharin and a new foal on the way, but Encelia couldn’t help but still feel that way. Why would her mother actually care if she were gone? Or her father or her siblings? They were all so much bolder and more vibrant than she was. Encelia was a no one. An afterthought. Whether she was there in the Badlands or gone, she was sure they would pay her the same amount of attention as they always had – as she had always allowed.
“I thought I was going to go back after today,” she said, then glanced back over her shoulder, down the distant shoreline to where she could just see the waves lapping at the sand. “But now I’m not so sure…” A thoughtful frown creased her brow as she spoke her thoughts aloud. “If I go back, what am I going back to?” It wasn’t a question he could answer, and it wasn’t one Encelia felt she could either.
She looked back at Canis, curiosity softening the frown that’d been across her pretty, slightly dished face. “Do you think you’re going to go back? Or are you going to find life away from Salem?”
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