The Believer

Chapter Sixteen: Stone

Thea turned Wilky's rock over and over in her hands. She wasn't sure what she expected it to do. It was a rock. Then again, it was a magic rock. Shouldn't it be glowing, or burning her hands, or controlling her mind or something?

But it was still just a rock.

No. It was Wilky's rock. Now Thea's rock. And Wilky was gone.

"You really like that rock," Helewis commented. Thea looked up, clasping the rock in her palm to hide it. The two had made camp outside of Ezrimond, on their way to a small city named Corran. Thea had requested that Helewis lead her there, and seeing as he didn't have much better to do, he'd agreed.

"What rock?"

"The rock you're trying to hide from me."

Thea reluctantly showed him the rock.

"Don't get me wrong, it's a very nice rock," Helewis said.

"It's the rock Wilky gave me."

"Then that makes it even nicer."

Thea should've been happy. She was free. Lorea would be her new, welcoming home. It was magnificent, it was grand, it was perfectection.

But there was no grandeur in Thea's mind. Only emptiness, a hole where that two hitchhiking companions once filled and now never would again. She felt Wilky's absence deeply in her heart, not a material source of pain that could be pinned down and attended to, but something much like wind of a storm. Perhaps it was more like the surge of ocean waves, rolling up and down the sand, and tumbling her emotions along with it.

"How are you taking this so calmly?" Thea asked Helewis a moment later, as she ran her fingers over the rock's smooth shape, and it continued to be a rock.

"Taking what so calmly?"

"Everything! Leaving Wilky and Casey, our journey coming to an end, all of it? Is this what your life is always like? You've lost everything because of me!"

"Because it doesn't help to spend my time troubling. I don't miss Casey and Wilky." His face was stiff, as if purposely trying not to show emotion. "And I will become something again, someday."

Thea slipped the rock back into her pocket, and her face hardened as she stared at the side of Helewis's head. "You're telling me you just don't care?"

He glanced over at her, his eyes tired. "Fine: let's be honest then, shall we? We're feeling the same things right now, you and I. I've been in this position before. The nightmare after a perfect dream, where everything goes wrong, where you have to teach yourself to move on, because if you don't, you can never be happy again." His face was tense, at the precise moment between pain, misery and anger, a balance of unhappy emotions where a person becomes dangerous.

Thea shook her head. "You don't mean-"

"Think what you will," Helewis told her absently, the feelings passing from his face. "Casey and Wilky are gone. Take it from me and move on."

Thea couldn't handle the idea of simply forgetting Wilky, not after everything that had happened between them. She couldn't just be gone. But Helewis was right. She was.

A part of her wondered what had happened to Helewis. He seemed like such a tough guy most of the time, but when it came down to it, he really wasn't that scary at all.

"Helewis."

Helewis's head turned slightly towards her.

"Why... why does it hurt?"