An Ending

The girl clambered up the muddy, hard slope to the highway. Her clothes were those of a man, though it hardly mattered either way, they were so covered in pitch from her labors. Her hands to here blackened and stained, as if burned by handling coals. Up she had come on her stomach, groveling into the cutting black stones, not minding the trail of scent and blood that she left in the dirt. Some wolf might find it and piss on it – what did it matter? Those who might search for her were too dainty to dirty themselves for the sake for finding her. She could not imagine that the search meant so much to them at all in any case. On she crept, perhaps not so quietly as she might hope, sending small rocks clattering down into the jutting ravine below. Above there was the sky, unclouded and speckled with a thousand hungry eyes to watch her with. To her left there were the trees, which could shelter and feed, had she not already said goodbyes to her friends amongst the green men. They were not for her anymore.

She did not herself truly know the plan. When she had run, leaving behind her father’s body and Crowe, encircled by villagers, there hadn’t been any thought to pass through her mind. Wretchedness, of course, was present, alongside a desire to move and to keep moving, until nothing looked familiar or beloved, and the world remained a stranger forever. She had gone to her mother’s house and found Crowe’s things in the spare room. She had wept over them a little – they were the scraps of a life that had collapsed about her. The itching came into her limbs again before long, and she leapt up, tears still streaking her eyes, pulling down her face, a watercolor fading in the rain. She looked to the door then, to the empty clothes on the bed. A step she took, away from the past, but her heart was not strong enough to bear it. Quickly shedding her own things, she pulled on Crowe’s shirt and trousers, shrugging into the vest and spare coat, tightening the cravat at her neck. It did not occur to her that the guise of a man would be safer in the places to which she ran, her only idea to bring a small part of Crowe with her. Into the pockets of her new wardrobe did she pour her mother’s short store of coppers, as well as seeds of a future, small plants useful to healing and arduous journeys. They would not be needed any longer to the one to which they had belonged. A few moments more saw her gone for ever from her mother’s house and the home of her youth.

It was a cruel, fearful day of watching the shadows lengthen, and twitching away from movement and sound. She took the winding path through the forest, not walking on it, but rather beside it, fleeing from she knew not what. Each tree she passed received a farewell caress, for each in itself was a memory of her wandering days as a child through her small, bright world. Now the night had come, and her passage became more rushed and wary, like that of an animal running from the whipping hand. Through streams she passed, tripping and falling into the frigid water, coming up sopping, yet feverish still to go on. Stones and roots caught at her feet, bruising toes and cutting at her soles. By the middle of the night, however, she had reached the highway.

On the edge of the road she now perched, hidden behind the lip of midnight stones that were sent flying every time a coach passed in the dark. The highway was silent though, and no living thing stirred it other than Daphne and the creeping things of the dark that lay beneath the stones and mud. If one had stood in the center of the road, looking about for a sign of life in a lifeless world, they might have just seen the gleaming whites of her eyes around the green center, two moons caught earthside in the glare of darkness. As it was, Crowe was not looking for anything as he stumbled from the woods. He looked not quite so badly as Daphne, having not yet drawn himself through the filth and excretion of the earth that he now rued. Why had he been given life? He remembered that he once had been so happy to breathe, to eat, to walk and run. The joy of those things had been stolen away by his father and his own greed. Lost to him was a wife, a future, mayhap a child, or rather the dream of all these things. His heart’s heart thanked the skies though that he had not continued on that path.

Crowe was yet oblivious to Daphne, perched as she was mostly out of sight. Her eyes darted over his features, shining against the dark of her blackened face. Had they stood side by side in that moment, they would have looked the brother and sister that they were, the dust and silence coating her in a skin as dark as Crowe’s had ever been. Two more shadows they were, in the shadow of the world, for all had fallen to darkness with them. It would all also wake up again in the morning as it had for years before and would for years into the future. The small tragedy that had befallen them would not crush or shake any besides themselves and perhaps a few in the small country village that they had just left behind. It was this that bound them, beyond even their mutual love and hatred. Love for all that they shared, for sunlit evenings, and strawberries eaten from a lover’s hand. Hate for accusation, for a shared father, for Pilar’s death, for the love itself.

All of these emotions, unthought, yet still felt, drew Daphne into the moonlight, to stand with Crowe a last time. She clambered painfully up from her spot on the side of the dune of coal. Her muscles yanked at her, causing spasms throughout arms and legs, protesting use after so long a labor and so cramped a rest. When finally she stood before him though, her spine was straight and proud, her chin lifted to the stars, her eyes resting on the comfort of his. He did not cry out at the sight of her. He did not shy away or gather her into his arms. Perfectly still was his countenance, as if he had expected her, which he had not. His mind screamed and shouted at him to begone from her, to leave her in the dust before his heart could be broken further. That same heart is not always so wise. Silently he held out a hand, which she slowly clasped in two of her own. Together they turned to face forward, the long road stretching away before their feet to the moon itself. A nonexistent wind clutched at Daphne’s hair, pulled at Crowe’s longcoat. Go, it told them, and wished them luck. For them it lifted feet, gathered strength, pulled them forward. The road would separate them later, in the face of the same wind. Arguments would still be had, that would carve them from each other’s hearts as a scar from a face, painfully, but completely. Still, they had this moment together, hand in hand, on a road bathed in the sun of the night. The wind stayed behind a moment, watching as they disappeared on the path to the moon.