As his mother berated him, deflecting his command with accusations of increasing derision, Orhan stared back at her with empty eyes. He willed his heart to be stone.
“These are my own thoughts, Ana. No one planted them in my brain,” he responded as calmly as he could muster, and swallowed to wet the dryness of his throat before continuing.
“Remember that time a few years ago when you left? For a while I thought perhaps you had found peace and happiness somewhere. Then I dreamed that something had happened to you, so I left the desert and searched. I didn’t find you, but I found others, and for a time I stayed with them. I was happy. For the first time in my life I lived without fear and did things I had never done before. It gave me perspective and made me see how isolated you had kept us here in the desert. We survived, you and I, but we did not live, did we?”
He angled his body and lifted his hind left leg, indicating the faded silver scar than ran the length of his cannon bone. “Even when I earned this – that day you found me on the beach, the day I almost died – I was happier than I had been on any day I’d spent here in the desert with you. I had lived.”
Emotion leaked into his voice, and he took a moment to close his eyes and collect himself. “And when that stallion came... I couldn’t hurt him. I just couldn’t. I realized that day that I don’t want to be like you. I don’t want to live in a world where every stranger is a threat, and where danger is always on the horizon. I’ve seen what it’s done to you: how many sleepless nights you’ve had, how your mind is always somewhere else... You are an empty shell filled with hate. I just don’t have the energy to live like that.
“And if, someday... I was to have children of my own... I most certainly wouldn’t want them to experience that. Even if you are right and something is coming for us all, I would rather die knowing I had trusted others than live knowing I had pushed everyone away.”
Tears pricked at his eyes again, but he plowed on, determined to get his words out before his mother could interrupt him. “If there was even the smallest chance of you changing, nothing could tear us apart. But I think we both know that you will never change. You are who you are. And that is why you have to leave.”
He turned away from her, facing in the direction of the beach, and did not meet her eyes again. “Now, will you go or do I have to escort you?”
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