Its strange how normal all this feels.
She’s not used to the conversation. To the pair of ears listening. To the proximity.
She’d not used to the calm. To the quiet. It’s too peaceful. It’s too…
Her nostrils flare in the softest of sighs and there’s a momentary tug of sadness in her eyes before the flicker dies. It’s too different.
There’s a bitterness that wells into her heart the longer this conversation goes on and it hasn’t been going on for long. It’s her turn to fall silent, a role she’s learned to fill all too well, but the silence isn’t still and her thoughts slowly turn cold in her mind. She had promised herself that things would be different if she managed to survive, that wherever she ended up, she would make an effort to change. But change is hard when you feel your skin crawling with unease and everything you’ve known and everything you’ve come to learn to be right in this world is now everything you’ve ever hated. And yet, when the opportunity to start again is presented… even after fighting for it with her life, to change, to survive, and to start again… It feels too hard.
Is it possible? It is ever… truly… possible?
As Hala begins to sink further and further into her mind there’s something that keeps her at the surface treading water. But the depth beyond that never comes because she catches him looking at her and it’s enough to pull her back into the present to question his gaze. There’s not much time to do anything else. He talks and they listen, Brick and herself, as he describes his home to them, all while she studies him further and quietly mulls over the new train of thoughts pouring into her mind. Islands… chains.
It was a suiting irony. Even though the context was different it was not beyond Hala to know that her newfound freedom was still chained in some way, be it to a stallion. Family. Islands of all things. It would never end no matter how far she swam, how long she fought. It was a hard reality to live with.
“Are all of the islands different?”
Paradiso.
It’s a hollow, simple question, but she asks him anyways because she knows he’ll probably know the answer. An ear swivels to Brick soon after, her gaze following with tired curiosity. “And yours? What is yours like?”
h a l a . a n d a l u s i a n x m u t t . m a r e . c a r n a g e.
