[ Grace is no longer red-lipped nor bright-eyed and she doesn't have to look into the mirror anymore to know that she won't last all that much longer by the rules of typical magic.
It's like falling down a hole. You can stall, but there's no stopping the inevitable. (It's terrifying.)
Sooner or later, wringing magic out of her is going to become more effort than it's worth. Sooner or later, that trade-off will trump whatever love Eamonn has for her (he'll get bored, or any myriad of other possibilities, she knows it's happened before, has seen the evidence on his skin, and this isn't love — is it?) and that'll be the end of the line. Point zero. Ground floor. There's no real fooling herself as to the nature of the sort of magic that binds the two of them together. She's replaceable. A notch on a bedpost, a spare battery, not an end in and of herself. Whatever she'd been when they'd started out (lovely, bright, full of a magic that seemed to buzz at his fingertips) is irrelevant. Her job can just as easily be done by someone else. It doesn't take much: just a rune, and a little ink. Voila. Back in business.
(She hears his voice when things go quiet and sees his face when she sleeps and she knows the same doesn't hold in reverse. He'd have gone crazy a long time ago if it did.)
The cottage is nice, she'll give it that much. It doesn't, however, seem to put her any more at ease. Maybe it's a last goodbye, she thinks. His way of saying it's been fun, thanks for the ride before she goes to sleep never to wake up again. The last time (the second time) she'd tried to run away had been six months ago, long enough that they don’t talk about it anymore but short enough, too, that it remains in the memory. (She'd wept, then, to a degree that she hadn't before. Who could blame her? Family dead, tethered to a shortening rope, no true way of discerning — anymore, at least — which thoughts were hers and which had been planted, unremarkable, undistinguished, kept alive for a single purpose. Wept, and said, just once: you don't love me, as if it were a weight she'd been crumbling under for as long as they'd been traveling together, or a realization she’d been trying to put off, or even a staccato, a part of a longer phrase.
If you loved me you'd just let me die. A drastic measure, maybe, but the only one in her estimation. Running away, after all, was an impossibility. You can't run from something written in your blood.)
It's been a bad week, but she wakes soon enough, looking more exhausted than she had when she'd gone to sleep. Her frame seems to close in on itself for a single instant, knees drawing up to her chest as her eyes open, brow knit against the new light as well as in the shadow of confusion. ]
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It's like falling down a hole. You can stall, but there's no stopping the inevitable. (It's terrifying.)
Sooner or later, wringing magic out of her is going to become more effort than it's worth. Sooner or later, that trade-off will trump whatever love Eamonn has for her (he'll get bored, or any myriad of other possibilities, she knows it's happened before, has seen the evidence on his skin, and this isn't love — is it?) and that'll be the end of the line. Point zero. Ground floor. There's no real fooling herself as to the nature of the sort of magic that binds the two of them together. She's replaceable. A notch on a bedpost, a spare battery, not an end in and of herself. Whatever she'd been when they'd started out (lovely, bright, full of a magic that seemed to buzz at his fingertips) is irrelevant. Her job can just as easily be done by someone else. It doesn't take much: just a rune, and a little ink. Voila. Back in business.
(She hears his voice when things go quiet and sees his face when she sleeps and she knows the same doesn't hold in reverse. He'd have gone crazy a long time ago if it did.)
The cottage is nice, she'll give it that much. It doesn't, however, seem to put her any more at ease. Maybe it's a last goodbye, she thinks. His way of saying it's been fun, thanks for the ride before she goes to sleep never to wake up again. The last time (the second time) she'd tried to run away had been six months ago, long enough that they don’t talk about it anymore but short enough, too, that it remains in the memory. (She'd wept, then, to a degree that she hadn't before. Who could blame her? Family dead, tethered to a shortening rope, no true way of discerning — anymore, at least — which thoughts were hers and which had been planted, unremarkable, undistinguished, kept alive for a single purpose. Wept, and said, just once: you don't love me, as if it were a weight she'd been crumbling under for as long as they'd been traveling together, or a realization she’d been trying to put off, or even a staccato, a part of a longer phrase.
If you loved me you'd just let me die. A drastic measure, maybe, but the only one in her estimation. Running away, after all, was an impossibility. You can't run from something written in your blood.)
It's been a bad week, but she wakes soon enough, looking more exhausted than she had when she'd gone to sleep. Her frame seems to close in on itself for a single instant, knees drawing up to her chest as her eyes open, brow knit against the new light as well as in the shadow of confusion. ]
I'm— I'm awake.