Crescent (Old Version)

+ Part 68 +

Days passed. I lost count of how many.

I didn't care to keep track. But, I spent the daylight hours searching through old closets for cleaning supplies and bins to gather water with. I found clothes in locked away cupboards and washed them in a bin around the back where a fenced in garden with a well sat.

I'd found a pauper's tub in the hut behind the lighthouse and had scrubbed myself clean of sweat and grime every night after finding a new project for the day.

I'd boarded up holes in the floorboards and swept glass away from the windows. The linens needed to be changed, the floors swept and hand-washed, the kitchen reorganized and inventoried. The lantern in the tower had long been broken down, and it had taken an entire day from sun up until dusk, to find the proper parts to get the mechanisms grinding again. The lantern still did not light. I'd given up. There was nothing to replace the windows with and there'd been far too little light to board them up. But, it allowed a gentle breeze to kiss the back of my neck and keep me cool on hotter days.

On days when the lighthouse felt too closed in, I wandered down to the sea that raged loudly against the shores at night. If you walked far enough along the cliffs, there was a small rocky trail that led down to a beach at low tide. Bits of blue sea glass warmed with me in the sun but a brutal wind often brushed sand up into the air.

There was no one around for miles and miles. In the opposite direction of the sea, docile creatures grazed pastures beneath slow-moving clouds. They roamed freely through broken boards in the fence- which I hadn't convinced myself to care about yet.

I hadn't been alone for the better part of a year now. I'd forgotten what it felt like to be alone. I expected peace. I expected that with Ceth gone, I'd finally stop worrying about living another day.

But, the longer I stayed here, the more I found I didn't worry about those things at all. I didn't think of living. I only thought of death. I only thought of pain. Pain I hadn't felt. Pain my family had. Pain two humans had. Pain a little boy who'd watched me kill his father had.

And, I felt none of it.

Maybe that was the worst part.

I felt nothing. Yet, I was the only one who deserved to feel all of it.

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A loud crash is what finally woke me. I jolted out of bed and nearly tumbled onto the floorboards in the dark when I heard the sound again. So loud it shook the floor beneath my feet.

Outside the half-shattered windows, a storm was raging. Thunder boomed, and it was pouring rain. Rain poured in from the windows. Puddles of it now made the desk by the window swell, and rivers of it wound over lips in the cliff. But, that booming sound resonated again- not thunder- and I shot downstairs as it shook the structure of the house.

The sound carried me straight out of the lighthouse door and into the rain. Droplets pounded my skin. I looked in all directions for anything out of place. But, only waves and rain battered the cliffside.

As first, I thought I'd imagined it. That maybe my mind had fathomed it entirely. But, I heard it again behind me. The door to the hut jiggled as the sound crashed again. And, again- bending the wooden door this time.

Something was in there.

My pulse picked up as I realized I had nothing to defend myself with. Defenseless, hopeless- again.

Cautiously, I neared the door and winced as the sound cracked again. It was followed by a smaller sound, a bleat that was near impossible to hear over the sound of the rain.

But, I cursed myself as I yanked the door open just as the goat came plowing out and spilling into the mud. I sighed as the goat skittered to its feet and tumbled back down the path it had wandered in from. The wooden planks at the bottom of the darkened hut had been knocked out somehow and the damn thing must have gotten stuck. The planks would have to be replaced to fix the hole in the morning. I cursed again. I didn't even know where to find more nails to fix it.

Why was I even here?? How much more of the same damn day could I take??

I sank to the ground, mud sloshing at my knees and ankles. My hair stuck to my face, to my skin, too close, too wet, too sticky. My clothes were ruined and I'd have to spend an entire day rewashing them and hanging them to dry.

"I'll come when you call," Gabriel had said. And, though I had no reason to go back, I had no reason to stay.

I had no reason to be here at all.

Moments later, he appeared in a mist before me. His long-sleeved shirt now clung to him, and I realized the same of my hair and the wool tunic I'd found to wear. The rain bore down on him now too but he didn't seem to care. His eyes hurriedly looked me over, and when he saw no sign of danger, the tension in his shoulders seemed to ease. Just slightly. He looked past me to the newly cleaned lighthouse, squinting against the rain. "You fixed it."

It looked like shit. The boards I'd replaced were practically useless now that they were waterlogged to hell. But, he smiled smally, almost as if he doubted whether he should do so.

It's like his grey eyes could see the dust-free shelves or the rearranged storage shelves through the walls. But, I didn't feel that I could say anything in response.

The waves crashed against the shore and even more rain dumped down on us. He held his palm out toward me and raised a brow. Just as I stepped toward him to be whisked away somewhere, he gripped my hand gently, pulling me just steps closer to him.

"I want to be clear in what I'm asking of you. You hold alliance in Ceth's court, but the things you see here, the people..." he watched me for any sign of hesitation. "Once we cross back into Glalas, there will be no going back."

I understood what he asked. I understood his doubt, but as he looked at me again, I knew I trusted him enough to keep his secrets- as he'd kept mine.

Foolish girl.