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“Goodbye.”
“Going off to marry that prince of yours?” I shout at her as she walks up the bank. “Don’t marry someone you don’t love. Don’t let others dictate your life.”
She doesn’t answer, her form growing smaller as she hurries away.
“Will you come back? To talk.”
Again, no reply.
“I care about you,” I say and I know she can’t hear me anymore, but the words come out anyway. It’s like lancing a wound. “I’ve never felt this way before. I told you, I wasn’t playing.”
But she’s already gone.
Tearing through the lake, hitting logs and rocks as I approach the opposite bank, I pull myself up on the shore and slam my fists into the ground. Grabbing rocks, I lance them at the lake, at the shore, at the trees, scaring flocks of small birds into flight.
I curse.
Throwing myself back into the water, I race to the shore where I met her. Grabbing branches from the weeping willows, I rip them off. I reach my favorite log where I sometimes sit and yank it into the water, break it apart, throw the pieces into the lake to float away.
I howl and rage.
Nothing helps.
What the fuck. What the hells.
Panting, I float in the shallows, blinking water from my eyes, shaking my hair out of my face. The mist of rage still hangs over me, darkening the world.
I shouldn’t have asked if she cared about me. I shouldn’t have rejected the gifts she brought me. This is on me. I chased her away.
It’s only that I want her to accept me as I am, to accept what is happening to me. Not to dress me up and think I can be a human. Not to ignore the curse.
Not to let go.
It’s too late now. Too fucking late. I’ve fucked up just like I’ve done with everything else in my life.
The fury is ebbing away, leaving me shaking.
Nothing I can do will bring her back. And I should be glad. She’s better off without me. She can’t save me, and even if she could, I am Fae and she is human. She’ll marry her prince, have pretty children, live happily ever after. Why should I even want to get in the way of that?
It makes no sense.
Nothing about the way I feel about her makes sense.
She was kind to you, I tell myself.That was all it was. She was kind and you’re lonely and short on kindness. You’re not in love with her. You’re just dependent on her.
Stop.
And yet I rage some more, smashing branches and slapping fish out of the water, scaring birds and small animals that come to drink. I’m an animal, too. Rational thought has fled. If nobody cares about me, why should I? Why should I even fucking try?
I think of how she felt in my arms in the water and can’t breathe.
She’s fine. She’s alive. That’s all that matters.
Get over it, Adar. It’s the only way.
That hope had been an illusion all along.
It takes me an entire day to go and retrieve the bag. In all fairness, now that the rage has left me, I can feel every new wound and scrape. The wound in my tail is angry and weeping and without my anger to fuel me, I’m damn exhausted.
