Ander - Part 6: Subchapter 81
81
The distance to that wall couldn't have been more than a few strides, but it felt much farther to Renna. The planks creaked beneath her feet with every step, and a multitude of eyes, both Wolf and Fox, followed her slow progress in dead silence.
She reached out to the wall and its row of wooden teeth, but hesitated. It was like a bottom set of jaws waiting for the top set to come crashing down, severing tendon and bone. Her stomach felt weird, like she was about to throw up, and her throat was sore and burning from all the screaming.
I have to do this, she thought. This is my last chance.
She grabbed hold of the stubby spikes and looked over the edge.
Mother was down there, covering her face with her hands. Renna couldn't be sure, it might just be a trick of the undulating currents of snow and wind, but she thought she might be crying. Dorin was beside her, struggling to get back to his feet. He looked rather angry.
Renna opened her mouth to call out to her, but quickly closed it again, suddenly overcome by a crushing wave of fear. Maybe she was being foolish. Even worse, maybe she was being selfish. The last time she tried to reach out to this she-wolf, she had been met with silence. The last time she tried to tell her own mother that she loved her, she was pushed away, out into the freezing night. The last time she opened her heart, she was left to rot in the snow.
By trying this again, she was opening her heart to even more torture. And even worse, by reaching out to the she-wolf that had done all of that, was she not turning her back on the one who had saved her from the cold? The one who had embraced her when she was all alone and afraid?
Was she making the biggest mistake of her life?
She could hear her down there, her faint sobbing carried by the wind. And Dorin, yelling at her to drop her hands, to stop being such a coward and face her daughter head-on, like this was some kind of battle.
But this wasn't a battle! This was... was...
Renna did not know what this was, only that it needed to be done. There was something she needed to do, something she needed to say, otherwise she would never be able to move on. She would be stuck inside that terrible night for the rest of her life, all alone, watching her own tears sink into the snow, wishing she could join them and turn into a dead drop of ice without any pain.
But what? What could she say that wouldn't be met with silence once again? What could she say that would finally melt this frozen icicle in her heart?
Which heart do you mean? Yours, or Mother's?
That thought came from out of nowhere, whole and complete, stopping her dead like an arrow.
Dorin was still yelling into Mother's ear, telling her that this would be the last chance she ever got to say something to her daughter, the last chance to make things right, or at least as close to right as possible.
He's doing it all wrong...
Renna knew this. Yelling would only be met with silence. Pleading would only be met with silence. Even if she laid her heart bare yet again to tell her that she loved her, it would only be met with silence.
I'm sorry, Mother... Please don't hurt me anymore...
I hurt you because I love you, Renna. It pains me every time you force me to do this. Please, please just stop. I beg of you, just stop_!_
I'm sorry...
She was capable of love, but the only love she could give was twisted and broken, so tightly intertwined with pain and suffering they could never be separated, and the worst part of it was that she knew this. She knew her brand of love was like a poisoned dagger, penetrating the heart and corroding it from the inside. That was why she couldn't say it anymore, that was why she couldn't even look at her own daughter anymore, and that was why she came all this way. Not to tell her daughter that she loved her, or to hear that she was loved, because she believed she deserved neither of those things. No, the real reason she came all this way, the real reason she was standing all alone, crying in the snow...
Dorin grabbed her by the wrists and pulled her hands down, forcing her to look up at the child she had thrown away.
There was a message scribbled across her collarbones, the brownish red of blood and clay, three words in Old Wolven, screaming into the wind.
Renna. Baiya Yamre.
She knew what words needed to be said now.
"Mother!"
She looked up, tears streaming down her face, and as their eyes locked together, Renna took a deep breath, and with the blizzard raging through the pass, she bellowed the words she knew would not be met with silence: "I forgive you!"
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