Meadow

“It’s here?” she asked, and even though he was concentrating on the peat-speckles of black dotting her pink lips, he could see the tidal shimmer of her eyes through the dark, blurring feathers of her lashes in his periphery, watching him. Was it better or worse to acknowledge that he wasn’t sure? Would she prefer to think he might be mistaken, or was it better to believe the thing was here, on this remote crown of islands? Rather than think on it any longer, he just nodded quietly, pursing his dark mouth and wondering what she was seeing on his face to make her expression do that.

She took his awkward subject change admirably, though, and magnanimously played along, even accepting his unspoken begging without making him say it out loud. She began pleasantly enough (even if it was an act, she was at least a better actor than he), but her hint of a smile and casual tone eroded quickly under the weight of what she was recounting, the texture of her voice grated into something rough by remembered cruelties. When she paused and collected herself, it froze him, and he realized he’d been leaning toward her, stretching to touch her furrowing brow- he stopped with a flutter of curls and reaffixed his gaze upon the ivory of her little feet, though he didn’t retreat from the space he’d taken, his harlequin mouth pursed with thoughts a few breaths from her shifting forelock.

“Awful things. The sort of unforgivable things that leave you absolutely certain that there's nothing redeemable about her at all.”

He hadn’t interrupted her yet, and didn’t interrupt her now, either, but his silence here was heavy and sharp as an unsheathed blade.

“And then I met someone else, someone I'd never seen before, who knew nothing of her villainy and spoke only of her kindness.”

His head jerked up at this, his brow tight, and her expression was a mirror.

“…Creatures of villainy are driven things- be it charm, or nobility, or even kindness; these things are only weapons to them to achieve their ends,” he managed at last, fiercely, ignoring her attempt to steer back to gentler topics. Perhaps he should’ve played along, as she had for him, but there was an indignity in letting this golden girl continue to believe that there may have been any reason that she should suffer at the hands of a beast when it spared someone else, and he couldn’t tolerate it.

More softly, leaning closer still until his nose brushed her silken waves, he continued, “You did not deserve it. Cruelty has its own aims- if you can’t understand it, all the better, but rest assured that nothing you did would have changed it.” Following close at her shoulder (he wondered if she was uncomfortable with his height) as she turned and began to walk, he tried to find the neutrality he had always been so bad at.

“I left everything to come here. I suppose it’s only myself and- the one we discussed now.” He hesitated, unsure if he should ask about her family; if that was too personal and painful for a discussion with an amicable stranger- but they’d shared this much. Nipping his lip in thought, he began carefully, “…And you? Who are you with now, Róisín?”