[ It is a difficult process, maintaining a tether for any prolonged amount of time. In truth, the practiced had never been meant to sustain itself but Eamonn is practiced enough in the needed rites to know how to stretch out his dollar's worth (juniper ash rubbed into a freshly cut rune; betel nut chewed and then used to thin the needle's ink). There comes a point, however, of diminishing returns — a moment either quick or slow when the amount of effort given in can no longer justify the magic wrung out. He isn't there with Grace yet, but he worries they'll get there soon enough. No magical exchange is 100% clean; there's always burn off — fog and smoke — that dissipates into nothingness. The cost of selfishness, he supposes, but that's the way all transactions work; magic isn't so special in that regard.
It's been a bad week and it shows in the circles under Grace's eyes, the way she sometimes struggles when he puts her to bed, like she's afraid sleep is some gaping hole she'll fall down and never come back from. He takes her to the beach in the hopes that it'll cheer her up — three weeks in a cottage that overlooks the western sea without barely another soul in sight. (It rains he entire time.)
On the third day there isn't so much a break in the clouds as a let-up in the spattering downpour. Eamonn's loathe to wake Grace as she naps on the couch, but he also knows she wants to see the water and now's as good a time as any.
A soft hand touches her shoulder. (He can be gentle with her when he wants to be.) ] Gracie.
[ The word bubbles up through her own thoughts, almost as if she'd thought it herself. ]
[ 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. ]
[ Maybe I t'at's what t'is is, Gracie, he'd said then as he pulled her up onto her feet and dragged her back to the car. Maybe I don't love you 't all. Fingertips had pressed bruises into her skin after, bruises that would last her a better part of a month and that he would be loathe to see again. Eamonn hadn't meant what he'd said of course, not really, not in any sense that he could get is arms around, but it always chafed whenever someone tried to run from him. (—you'd be dead, if it weren't f'r me. The ot'ers'd be suckin' th'marrow from y'r bones—)
And from Grace it outright stung. (T'ere's no way I'm lettin' y'die, girl.)
She hadn't spoken to him for a week after and he, in turn, hadn't spoken to her either. It had been, effectively, their darkest time together and though Eamonn has an appreciation for certain inevitabilities, he has no intention of hurrying them along back to that place any time soon.
When Grace squints against the light, Eamonn lifts his hand instinctively to cast the distorted shadow of his fingers over her eyes. Again, it's a kindness, an inane sort of thoughtfulness — the kind of thing that somehow denies so much of his usual cloy, if only in how understated (and perhaps earnest) it is. The corner of his mouth crooks but he doesn't smile, not quite. His gaze runs a circuit over her features but he doesn't ask if she'd had bad dreams (he knows they're bad because he's seen them, because he's been in them, because they are him). Still, his tone skirts regretful, flirts with it but never actually arrives there. (Regret isn't a sentiment he has much use for. Perhaps it'd mean something to Grace if he gave it to her, but men don't acquire the things they dont' deserve through regret. And Eamonn came to terms with the fact that he doesn't deserve Grace a long time ago.) ]
Stopped rainin'. Sun ain't shinin', but— T'ought you'd want t'know.
[ (Maybe I don’t love you ‘t all. Maybe I'd rather be dead. Bruises in the shapes of hands and shallow gravel-worn scabs. Cuts that had taken a week of silence to even begin to hide. Neither of them can see the forest for the trees.)
Slowly (like she aches, like it’s difficult), she pushes herself upright, chin ducked down toward her chest and her eyes still blinking away the heaviness of sleep. Each movement she makes is not necessarily economical, but it’s small, as if by conserving her own energy she might be able to prolong the life of her own magic. (It’s a frivolous kind of gesture, in the end, but she has never wanted to die, not truly, and, by that same token, she has never wanted to be alone.
His tone flirts with regretful but it never quite gets there, and therein lies the gap, a sliver that turns into an abyss the more she picks at the difference. She loves him. Maybe he’d planted the thought, maybe she’d borne it herself, but the fact remains. She loves him, whether he deserves it or not.
What does that leave her? He loves me, he loves me not. Does it matter in the end?)
[ All things fade with time. That is the natural order of things. Wind erodes rock. Rock becomes sand. Sand shapes water. Water becomes air. The mathematics of it all is elegantly simplistic — something becomes something else and, all the while, a little bit is lost in the process. Lost to atmosphere and vapor; residual magic and space dust. Scars heal; they dull with time, what was once glassy and white losing its luster (and with its luster, its power). That's why Grace's rune still weeps at the base of his neck, the lines of it meticulously retraced every few weeks to make sure his hold on her doesn't weaken and that he always has a way to slip into her dreams. It takes a toll on her every time, the days that follow always the hardest. But eventually, as always, there is an evening out — the body (the universe) attempting to re-establish balance.
Amyranth doesn't believe in balance. Sometimes Eamonn wonders when the universe will get wise to the fact and correct them once and for all. Sometimes he thinks Grace is that correction. (It's a dangerous thought. I should kill you, I should. But he doesn't.)
Leaning over her, his face lingering near hers, he tucks a bit of her hair behind her ear. ] Y'can do whatev'r y'fancy, Grace.
[ Except leave me. Except leave.
Unprompted he kisses her lightly on the cheek, the gesture doting, almost fatherly. ] Are y'goin' t'be wantin' comp'ny?
[ His shadow casts itself across her face, the edges of the dark blurring and shifting on her skin. (Always, there is an evening out, and in this case, that evening out is the carving of a niche in the shape of his name in the middle of blood and muscle and bone. A forfeit, terribly rare and given up for free despite what it's cost her. Once that's done, the balance is struck. The candle is burned up. Love, with the whole heart, no half measures. The only question that's left is what happens after.
A doll can be owned but it does not think to own, in turn, and she knows she isn't much more than one of them. Pulled by strings she has no say over, molded this way and that despite her best efforts to resist the tide.)
He kisses her upon the cheek and the kneejerk impulse flashes once on her features. A smile, small but bright, the look in her eyes young for all of a single instant. (Do you remember what I was like when you first took me? Will you think of me that way when I'm gone, or will you remember me like this? Will you think of me at all?) The question that follows holds the same sort of childish sentiment, a sort of compensation (subconscious, on her part) for how quickly she'd lost that precociousness upon being taken as a well. ]
Do you want to come with me?
[ A yes with a few bells and whistles, a please. ]
[ He looks at her and he thinks it a shame. Not because she's less beautiful (she isn't), and not because he likes her any less (he doesn't). But because maybe, just maybe he wants her even more this way — meager and threadbare and already his, his name stitched upon very muscle and nerve, his magic sunk deep into her, its tendrils chokeholding every seam, making every moment slow and small except for that brief flash of a smile.
(It'll never last but nothing does. The more precious she gets, the quicker she'll burn. Not unless he gets creative and creativity isn't cheap and Eamonn isn't sure he can admit to her earning it.) ]
T'ought y'd never ask.
[ Grace smiles and so Eamonn smiles in turn — the corners of his mouth pinched upwards, the angle too sharp and the sentiment far too indulged — as he reaches first for her shoulder and then for her breast, kissing Grace again. Please and thank you; selfish through and through; more cloy but still no claw. (Y'r right gorg'us when y'smile like t'at, he'd told her once. He says it less these days but still the memory occurs to her now, the sound of it in her ears like the tolling of a big, fat bell.)
His mouth is still on her, his hand still pawing when he mutters thick with satisfaction: ] T'ere ain't a place in t'is wide world—
[ Where I won't follow. Where you can hide from me. The sentiment is both sweet and suffocating. (He doesn't know any other way to be.) ]
[ (It'll never last but nothing does — that's the rule not just of this brand of magic but of life itself. He walks through her every thought, itches under her skin, and bit by bit she has come to know his color. She knows that he doesn't know any better than sweet and suffocating. She knows his attentions are split, that the fact he keeps her doesn't make him special. She knows how badly the cords that run through her have been twisted and turned.
She knows he loves her but that knowledge takes the shape of shattered glass, a complete image in one light but shards in the next, sharp enough to cut and bleed. He loves her, but there is nothing that that has brought her except grief.)
His voice tolls through her head and she can't quite tell — even though he's kissing her, even though his tongue is pressing into her mouth — if she's hearing them in her head or he's saying them out loud. Her grasp upon him — one hand curled into his hair, the other at his waistband — tightens abruptly, and she draws in a sharp breath with her lips still pressed to his, as if she could draw forth the sentiment that she's been chasing for so long directly from the hollow of his chest. ]
Tell me.
[ It's a plea, more than a request or an order. Tell me. Finish the sentence. Pick an ending. ]
[ Daniel comes in from the water, slacks rolled up to his ankles. The bottom of his sweater is damp and cold; it'll start to smell in a beat from all the salt and sea, but well worth it for a few extra clams. (You never know when you'll have visitors.) Sand sticks to the soles of his feet as he walks in to the shore, two plastic buckets (one red, one green) clutched in hand.
He's tidying everything up for the drive back when he sees her there. In his peripheral the line of the ocean blurs and she's a lone figure of cream and teal; he smiles as he approaches, head bowed and hands in his pockets. ]
Without the boyfriend? [ Teasing without the malice and jovial without the jaunt; there's an implication there if anyone looks hard enough. But that's how Amyranth works, isn't it? ] Grace, was it?
[ Magical autonomy is something Grace hasn't had for a long time, and it's always with envy (envy, and something that toes the line between dislike and hate) that she regards the witches of Amyranth. How nice must it be still to be able to cast your own magic?
(She remembers crafting flames with her bare hands, and she remembers shards of ice. It seems like a lifetime ago.)
Daniel, given the nature of his gift, is the exception. It doesn't make them much closer — he isn't being tapped for his magic — but it's something. When he calls, she turns, one hand raised to shield her eyes, a makeshift guard against the whip of her auburn hair. (Where once her beauty had been bright and unfettered, it has faded into something a little harder to catch; apt for the grey that colors the sky and the cold that nips at one's heels with the roll of the tide.) ]
Yeah, Grace. [ Then, almost absently: ] He's busy. [ Both answers seem more like asides than anything else, though the second bears the same sort of odd on-off teasing quality. (Maybe he is, maybe he isn't, either way it bears asking what she's doing alone.) It's a little while before she says anything else. Sorry, she thinks, maybe. It's been a long week. Something like that.
Ah. [ He hums as if her explanation is perfectly satisfactory — a quiet acceptance more than brush-off. Daniel's seen them come and go, Ceangail's girls, though he's only been tangently, distantly aware of it. It's a crude thought, how a dog with a mangled leg is better put to sleep; its bones are broken and it'll never trust again, will it, and it's certainly not happy. (Well— maybe.)
But, he thinks, eyes quiet and easy in the way they take in the planes of Grace's face, the set of her mouth and the darkness under her eyes — that might happen sooner rather than later. ]
And together we're Grace and Daniel. How about that, hm? [ He flashes her a smile, rubbing a hand along the stubble of his jaw as he turns. The sea is starting to wake; he sees waves that are white-capped peaks in the horizon. The tide's coming in.]
You might catch something, waiting out here like that.
[ This comment, too, seems made in passing, but the words weigh themselves down in a way that only the truth can. (He sees it and she sees it, too. Sooner rather than later, the tapestry that's fraying at the edges will be replaced by one that's younger, brighter, more lovely. It's just the way things go.) To her credit, she doesn't linger on the thought, at least not for the moment. Thinking about a broken bone won't make it heal and mulling over what she can't change won't alter the course of what's to come. And besides, Daniel hasn't asked for a treatise of that kind, and unlike some, he's been nothing but kind, if in a cursory sort of manner.
She's smiling, the next time that she looks over at him, white foam gathering briefly about her ankles before the water retreats again. (That's a good girl, Gracie.) ]
[ It's nice to see her smile. He thinks it openly but, as these things go, maybe it's not a particularly kind thing — he's sure men have said that to her with less than good intentions, so there's no desire to speak it out loud. (And then, there's the other thing: Ceangail isn't a particularly light sort, is he?) ] Nah, don't worry about me. [ Daniel taps the side of his nose, a quick wink to follow, a here's a secret and you can do with it as you please. ] Takes more than a little cold. And I already caught some bloody fish today. I think that's plenty of somethings.
[ A beat passes. He doesn't move or shift his weight, just breathes in to the ebb and flow of the tide. Salt expands his lungs and there's an itch in his palms, a thread that extends all the way back to his own windowsill and the tiny shakkan there.
Finally: ] Alright, then?
[ As in: are you? As in: I can't do anything. As in: But you can tell me, if you'd like to.
Grace is not so far gone not to be able to tell the difference between nice and not, and out of under Amyranth's figurative roof that she's met, it's Daniel who has been the most considerate. (She knows — she knows — Eamonn doesn't fall into the same category. It is not kindness that brings him into her bed, nor into her thoughts.) She wrinkles her nose at the question, almost as if in surprise. ]
For now, [ she tells him, and, as with the apparent theme of the conversation so far, there are a million subtexts. ] A little tired, I guess. [ For now, she survives. For now, she's still useful. But the returns aren't one hundred percent anymore, and they're not set to climb back up. And no, he can't do anything, even if he'd want to — she doesn't know if he would — and neither can she.
Still, she smiles (because there's nothing else she can do, because it doesn't do either of them good for her to mope, because he's kind and that is much more than most think to offer a well. (Because he reminds her of something besides what she has now, of something good.) ]
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It's been a bad week and it shows in the circles under Grace's eyes, the way she sometimes struggles when he puts her to bed, like she's afraid sleep is some gaping hole she'll fall down and never come back from. He takes her to the beach in the hopes that it'll cheer her up — three weeks in a cottage that overlooks the western sea without barely another soul in sight. (It rains he entire time.)
On the third day there isn't so much a break in the clouds as a let-up in the spattering downpour. Eamonn's loathe to wake Grace as she naps on the couch, but he also knows she wants to see the water and now's as good a time as any.
A soft hand touches her shoulder. (He can be gentle with her when he wants to be.) ] Gracie.
[ The word bubbles up through her own thoughts, almost as if she'd thought it herself. ]
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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.
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And from Grace it outright stung. (T'ere's no way I'm lettin' y'die, girl.)
She hadn't spoken to him for a week after and he, in turn, hadn't spoken to her either. It had been, effectively, their darkest time together and though Eamonn has an appreciation for certain inevitabilities, he has no intention of hurrying them along back to that place any time soon.
When Grace squints against the light, Eamonn lifts his hand instinctively to cast the distorted shadow of his fingers over her eyes. Again, it's a kindness, an inane sort of thoughtfulness — the kind of thing that somehow denies so much of his usual cloy, if only in how understated (and perhaps earnest) it is. The corner of his mouth crooks but he doesn't smile, not quite. His gaze runs a circuit over her features but he doesn't ask if she'd had bad dreams (he knows they're bad because he's seen them, because he's been in them, because they are him). Still, his tone skirts regretful, flirts with it but never actually arrives there. (Regret isn't a sentiment he has much use for. Perhaps it'd mean something to Grace if he gave it to her, but men don't acquire the things they dont' deserve through regret. And Eamonn came to terms with the fact that he doesn't deserve Grace a long time ago.) ]
Stopped rainin'. Sun ain't shinin', but— T'ought you'd want t'know.
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Slowly (like she aches, like it’s difficult), she pushes herself upright, chin ducked down toward her chest and her eyes still blinking away the heaviness of sleep. Each movement she makes is not necessarily economical, but it’s small, as if by conserving her own energy she might be able to prolong the life of her own magic. (It’s a frivolous kind of gesture, in the end, but she has never wanted to die, not truly, and, by that same token, she has never wanted to be alone.
His tone flirts with regretful but it never quite gets there, and therein lies the gap, a sliver that turns into an abyss the more she picks at the difference. She loves him. Maybe he’d planted the thought, maybe she’d borne it herself, but the fact remains. She loves him, whether he deserves it or not.
What does that leave her? He loves me, he loves me not. Does it matter in the end?)
A beat, then two. Her toes wiggle once.
Finally: ] Can I take a walk?
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Amyranth doesn't believe in balance. Sometimes Eamonn wonders when the universe will get wise to the fact and correct them once and for all. Sometimes he thinks Grace is that correction. (It's a dangerous thought. I should kill you, I should. But he doesn't.)
Leaning over her, his face lingering near hers, he tucks a bit of her hair behind her ear. ] Y'can do whatev'r y'fancy, Grace.
[ Except leave me. Except leave.
Unprompted he kisses her lightly on the cheek, the gesture doting, almost fatherly. ] Are y'goin' t'be wantin' comp'ny?
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A doll can be owned but it does not think to own, in turn, and she knows she isn't much more than one of them. Pulled by strings she has no say over, molded this way and that despite her best efforts to resist the tide.)
He kisses her upon the cheek and the kneejerk impulse flashes once on her features. A smile, small but bright, the look in her eyes young for all of a single instant. (Do you remember what I was like when you first took me? Will you think of me that way when I'm gone, or will you remember me like this? Will you think of me at all?) The question that follows holds the same sort of childish sentiment, a sort of compensation (subconscious, on her part) for how quickly she'd lost that precociousness upon being taken as a well. ]
Do you want to come with me?
[ A yes with a few bells and whistles, a please. ]
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(It'll never last but nothing does. The more precious she gets, the quicker she'll burn. Not unless he gets creative and creativity isn't cheap and Eamonn isn't sure he can admit to her earning it.) ]
T'ought y'd never ask.
[ Grace smiles and so Eamonn smiles in turn — the corners of his mouth pinched upwards, the angle too sharp and the sentiment far too indulged — as he reaches first for her shoulder and then for her breast, kissing Grace again. Please and thank you; selfish through and through; more cloy but still no claw. (Y'r right gorg'us when y'smile like t'at, he'd told her once. He says it less these days but still the memory occurs to her now, the sound of it in her ears like the tolling of a big, fat bell.)
His mouth is still on her, his hand still pawing when he mutters thick with satisfaction: ] T'ere ain't a place in t'is wide world—
[ Where I won't follow. Where you can hide from me. The sentiment is both sweet and suffocating. (He doesn't know any other way to be.) ]
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She knows he loves her but that knowledge takes the shape of shattered glass, a complete image in one light but shards in the next, sharp enough to cut and bleed. He loves her, but there is nothing that that has brought her except grief.)
His voice tolls through her head and she can't quite tell — even though he's kissing her, even though his tongue is pressing into her mouth — if she's hearing them in her head or he's saying them out loud. Her grasp upon him — one hand curled into his hair, the other at his waistband — tightens abruptly, and she draws in a sharp breath with her lips still pressed to his, as if she could draw forth the sentiment that she's been chasing for so long directly from the hollow of his chest. ]
Tell me.
[ It's a plea, more than a request or an order. Tell me. Finish the sentence. Pick an ending. ]
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He's tidying everything up for the drive back when he sees her there. In his peripheral the line of the ocean blurs and she's a lone figure of cream and teal; he smiles as he approaches, head bowed and hands in his pockets. ]
Without the boyfriend? [ Teasing without the malice and jovial without the jaunt; there's an implication there if anyone looks hard enough. But that's how Amyranth works, isn't it? ] Grace, was it?
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(She remembers crafting flames with her bare hands, and she remembers shards of ice. It seems like a lifetime ago.)
Daniel, given the nature of his gift, is the exception. It doesn't make them much closer — he isn't being tapped for his magic — but it's something. When he calls, she turns, one hand raised to shield her eyes, a makeshift guard against the whip of her auburn hair. (Where once her beauty had been bright and unfettered, it has faded into something a little harder to catch; apt for the grey that colors the sky and the cold that nips at one's heels with the roll of the tide.) ]
Yeah, Grace. [ Then, almost absently: ] He's busy. [ Both answers seem more like asides than anything else, though the second bears the same sort of odd on-off teasing quality. (Maybe he is, maybe he isn't, either way it bears asking what she's doing alone.) It's a little while before she says anything else. Sorry, she thinks, maybe. It's been a long week. Something like that.
Or maybe not. ]
You're Daniel.
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But, he thinks, eyes quiet and easy in the way they take in the planes of Grace's face, the set of her mouth and the darkness under her eyes — that might happen sooner rather than later. ]
And together we're Grace and Daniel. How about that, hm? [ He flashes her a smile, rubbing a hand along the stubble of his jaw as he turns. The sea is starting to wake; he sees waves that are white-capped peaks in the horizon. The tide's coming in.]
You might catch something, waiting out here like that.
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[ This comment, too, seems made in passing, but the words weigh themselves down in a way that only the truth can. (He sees it and she sees it, too. Sooner rather than later, the tapestry that's fraying at the edges will be replaced by one that's younger, brighter, more lovely. It's just the way things go.) To her credit, she doesn't linger on the thought, at least not for the moment. Thinking about a broken bone won't make it heal and mulling over what she can't change won't alter the course of what's to come. And besides, Daniel hasn't asked for a treatise of that kind, and unlike some, he's been nothing but kind, if in a cursory sort of manner.
She's smiling, the next time that she looks over at him, white foam gathering briefly about her ankles before the water retreats again. (That's a good girl, Gracie.) ]
You might, too, you know. Catch something.
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[ A beat passes. He doesn't move or shift his weight, just breathes in to the ebb and flow of the tide. Salt expands his lungs and there's an itch in his palms, a thread that extends all the way back to his own windowsill and the tiny shakkan there.
Finally: ] Alright, then?
[ As in: are you? As in: I can't do anything. As in: But you can tell me, if you'd like to.
Or not. ]
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Grace is not so far gone not to be able to tell the difference between nice and not, and out of under Amyranth's figurative roof that she's met, it's Daniel who has been the most considerate. (She knows — she knows — Eamonn doesn't fall into the same category. It is not kindness that brings him into her bed, nor into her thoughts.) She wrinkles her nose at the question, almost as if in surprise. ]
For now, [ she tells him, and, as with the apparent theme of the conversation so far, there are a million subtexts. ] A little tired, I guess. [ For now, she survives. For now, she's still useful. But the returns aren't one hundred percent anymore, and they're not set to climb back up. And no, he can't do anything, even if he'd want to — she doesn't know if he would — and neither can she.
Still, she smiles (because there's nothing else she can do, because it doesn't do either of them good for her to mope, because he's kind and that is much more than most think to offer a well. (Because he reminds her of something besides what she has now, of something good.) ]
Not much of a surprise, though, is it?