Eclipse Child |✔|

|47|

Stars are not small or gentle

They are withering and dying and burning

They are not here to be pretty

I am trying to learn from them

-Caitlyn Siehl "sky poem"

***

I had said it to Orion once, the truth of what he was to me.

You are my heart.

He was the object that made me care, the person that centered me.

You are my heart.

And now, my heart is gone.

I feel its absence, the empty space where it should have been lodged deep in my chest. No emotion spreads over me as I numbly stare at the desk.

The door opens.

My head shoots up involuntarily, a wild gasp leaving me at the anticipation of seeing anything- a tan wolf, puppy eyes, tangled hair.

Him.

Grandjay stands in the doorway, a look of shattered defeat falling over him.

"He's gone."

He said the words that I had been fighting against thinking.

Now the truth was slapped to my face, hitting me back into awareness of my surroundings.

When had it become day?

When had the night dissolved to reveal light?

Grandjay walks further in, his nose flaring at the scent that saturated the office. What did he smell?

Defeat? Sorrow? Maybe the blood of my flesh, the gaping wound in my chest- the agony of having such a thing ripped away.

He sits down in front of me, a deep sigh carrying into his bones as shoulders fall back to the chair, melting into the frame with a weary movement.

"You pay no attention to the warnings of others."

Something bubbles in me then. A new emotion.

My heart was gone, leaving me to revert back to the creature I had been before I received such a prize.

Wild. Angry. Reckless and Hungry.

"Why do you do that Soraya? Just to prove that maybe you can defy fate?"

Grandjay shakes his head, leaning further back in the chair as he lowers his gaze to me, "the moon goddess is merciless."

"Don't blame this on the Moon Goddess."

Grandjay blinks in surprise at me.

"She is testing you."

A bitter laugh flows out at me at such foolish words.

"She's not testing me. She's not to blame. Can't you see already?"

I hold my arms out, extending them to expose my full rotting soul.

"It's me. It's always been me. I'm the monster."

Grandjay is silent, staring at me with such sad eyes. I want them away. I want him to look somewhere else. To leave.

"You'll regret it the rest of your life. If you don't stop him now- if you don't go after him...You'll regret it."

I shake my head, ridding my mind of his words.