GAAL, LIBRAS

He will never see her again.

They tell him not to think like this. To have hope and trust in her. In their Electi. 

They tell him grand stories of bountiful harvests from the past. When the stomachs of children in Libras were bulging from full tables, not from air. When skin was tan from unending gentle sunlight, and crisp waters sliced through the land with gentle gurgles. 

They swear she will return from this trip and life will get better. That she is the reason to hope. She is the one to fill the hollowed faces of the children too malnourished to move. She will bring back the game, the clean water, the sun. 

The townspeople smother her with warm wishes and plans for her grand return as she makes her way through the ramshackle path to the boundary of the forest. She walks through their small village with a smile plastered on her too pale face, shaking her head graciously at the pitiful attempts made by her neighbors to fill her travel sack. They drop in whatever spare food they can. 

Her bag is too light. Far too light, if you take out the threadbare blanket she has packed. Far too light for the long trip planned. 

He can see it in her eyes no matter how desperately she tells him she is not worried. The acceptance of her fate. The trip home she will never make. 

Mother holds her cheeks and whispers something fierce enough for both women to blink away the glistening in their eyes. Father presses a kiss on her forehead, the line between his brows etched deeper in his waxen skin than normal. She melts into the embraces, curling her far too lean body around her younger siblings, all barely more than wisps in the wind. The littlest ones do not wipe their cheeks. She does it for them.

Her dark brown eyes lift to find his. A wordless conversation passes, one neither one of them want to have. She blinks, and a weak smile lifts her cheeks. “I will tell them of our plight,” she promises the people, her voice stronger than he expected. “They will know of us here in Gaal.”

Goodbyes are shouted. Last minute hugs given. 

As the crowd dissipates and their parents usher the youngest children back to their once proud house, now little more than a shack, she gestures for him to follow her into the forest ahead. 

A cool embrace of shade blankets them under the withering, blotchy canopy. It was always a relief from the hot summer sun when he was a child. But now with the sun hiding more and more each day, the chill does nothing but bury further into his marrow. 

She wraps a lean hand around his elbow. “No well wishes for me?”

He scoffs. “Why would I when we both know what you’re doing is nothing more than beatified suicide?”

“A bit pessimistic. But you always were.”

He rips from her grasp, furious at himself for pulling away from a touch he knows he will never have again, but more furious with her. “She is there. Since she was found and brought to Ardere, everything in Libras has gone wrong.”

“That isn’t true. You know she did not enter of her own free will. It was—”

“The Wolf, yes,” he mutters, rolling his eyes and lifting his gaze to the bleak gray light above. “Ever the bad, evil man.”

“Don’t roll your eyes at me,” she snaps. “Things were already taking a turn for the worse when he found her. Part of me thinks she is as innocent as the rest of us.”

“Will you say the same thing when she rips through your mind?” He takes a step closer, his anger and worry and fear a tangible thing in his throat. She may be older, but he still looks down at her stubborn face. “When you have no memory of yourself or why you’re there? When you can no longer remember me?”

His sister does not balk. “Is it her you’re afraid of? Or her power?”

“Can’t it be both?”

“No.” She throws the end of her light brown braid over her shoulder. “She was one of us. Raw and real just like you and me. From what I’ve heard, her village had been hit with a blight like ours. She was a simple farmer like us. I cannot imagine a girl thrust into her situation to be a monster at her core.”

He will not hear it. “I don’t think it matters what you believe when her power eliminates anything it wants from your head.”

“Maybe not. But let her see the real me when she’s in there. Let her see this conversation and know she could have a friend.”

He stares at her, the sister four years older than him who somehow became his best friend, his confidant, after so many years spent at each other’s throats, and wills the tears behind his eyes to remain put. “Please don’t go.”

Her resolve flickers. Just a hint of it in the eyes as dark as his own, and a flutter of hope awakens in his chest. 

“We are starving,” she whispers, gesturing to the quiet village far behind them. “We cannot afford to move to Ardere. There are other civilians all across Libras making this same pilgrimage. If the Electi don’t listen, I will find a Debilior to plead my case to. I can’t do nothing. I have to do this.”

“Let me come with you,” he urges as if he hasn’t spent weeks trying to convince her already. 

She shakes her head slowly. “You are the only one who can hunt game for them.” 

“Father can—”

“His tremors are growing worse by the day. Nocking an arrow would be hard enough.” She swallows against the growing dampness in her eyes and steps forward, clasping her cold hand around his. “You have to feed them. You are the only one I trust to keep our family alive.”

They stare at each other. Allow their fear and despair and frustration to run freely across their eerily similar faces. She gives his hand a small squeeze. “No matter what happens to me, I need you to promise me you will remember the two things I am about to tell you.”

He nods once, stiffly. Reluctantly. 

She swallows. Twice. Grits her teeth. “The first and most important thing is that I love you more than you will ever understand, and I will always, always, be with you.” Her hand presses against his chest where his shriveling heart thunders.

The dam in his soul breaks. Tears fall freely down his cheeks, his chin, in heavy streams. She smiles softly and wipes them with her thumb. “If my mind is no longer in this world, if my heart no longer beats to a steady rhythm in my chest, know that loving you and knowing you has been the biggest honor of my life.”

His knees wobble. She leans forward and presses a soft, warm kiss on his cheek. 

“And the second thing you must know, is something that can never be repeated to anyone.”

“I have no one to talk to if you leave,” he whispers through a thick throat. 

“That’s not true. You have the birds. The wind. The aether.”

“I’ll look crazy.”

“Aren’t we all?” She winks, unbearably collected as he actively falls apart inside. “The second thing you must know and understand, little brother, is nothing changes if nothing changes.” 

He can’t explain it even hours later, still rooted in the same spot he was in as he watched her begin her trek to the capital city. Can’t explain the fire in his chest, the deep sorrow in his soul at the meaning of the last words she spoke to him before willingly entering the Wolf’s den.