zg_shadows | Because she still lives in the back of my head

There are many things about the world that we don’t yet understand. A Glasswalker once told me that they would figure it all out one day but I reckon there will always be a few mysteries – life’d be pretty dull otherwise. But anyway… chief among those mysteries are the links that tie us together. Somehow, despite the distance and the years between us, London was always home. When the wind was in the West I could almost smell the river and hear the tapping of an umbrella on paving slabs.

The wind was in the West today. I’d slept badly and been so snappish all day that Fintan’s Fury-rhya sat me on lookout to keep me out of the way while the rebuilding was going on. Mick’s pretty understanding. He had to be to take in the battered waif that turned up on the edge of the bawn nearly five years ago with the scars of two lifetimes on her back. Never asked more questions than he needed to and I never told him anything he didn’t want to know.

So there I was sulking on a rock and hoping that some son-of-a-bitch rat had survived the kicking we gave them so I could stomp on its goolies and send it crying home to mama. Suddenly I smelled him. Gaia help me I nearly ran to meet that smell but it was gone as soon as it came, leaving the memory of a young man with a car full of crap driving me up to Oxford. I was so sure I knew more than him. I was so damn wrong. We sat there after the ascension and he didn’t once tell me I was a silly little girl… gotta give him credit for that.

“Tell me a secret.”

“I hate peas”

“No… something real.”

He told me his name. I never did find out if it was true. Sometimes I think he never told the truth in his whole life.

I always meant to go back and see him – the whole sept really, but especially him. Only… what he became frightened me a bit. Then there was the whole killing me thing, but I forgave him for that. It’s not like it stuck. I wanted to tell him that I finally learned sanscrit, and show him my rank marks. I wanted him to know that I found a place for myself. Mostly I wanted to tell him that I never stopped loving him.

“So fly away you raven girl, so fly away from me, to find the tiger in the sky and cross the rising sea.”

The voice was soft, rough and unmistakeably Jamie. Then he was just as unmistakeably gone.

Mick brought the tea out himself and if he noticed how puffy my eyes were he wasn’t saying.