“Mother! This is ridiculous! I am fourteen years old! I am not sick and I am not going to get sick.”
“Rory, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean –”
In a rare display of anger toward her, he sliced his hand through the air. “No. This is enough. I’ve been meaning to talk to you about this for a while, but I’m moving into Dillan’s …show more content…
She tried to avoid the flat rock where she had kissed Maxen all those years ago, because being anywhere near that spot brought up such pain. In fact, she’s had the fallen log obscuring that area chopped up and hauled away ages ago, hoping it would somehow make the space look different; it hadn’t.
She wiggled her toes in the water and inhaled deeply. The smell of summer, of warmed earth and mellowed pine, filled her senses. And yes, just as she had once told Maxen, she tasted summer. Sunshine, heat, and hot sand had distinctive flavors, in her mind.
Scooting forward on the rock and dipping in her feet up to her ankles, Audra thought about all the people she missed, since their numbers had grown so exponentially during the past year. Una’s family and Geraint had moved away nine years ago now. They kept up with their correspondence, but that wasn’t the same. Perhaps she should make time to visit them before it was too late.
And within the last month, she had lost her mother, and a week ago, Travana and Eudaf. She pictured them together, laughing and smiling in the hereafter, and she could not stop her tears from falling. Audra considered her friends to be family, and her family had shrunk so much during the course of mere …show more content…
Though likely, she would never know when or where he died. His annual gifts would just stop coming and they would be that. She’d be left forever wondering, unless the afterlife truly did provide answers for all.
Tossing another pebble into the water, she tried to focus on that for which she was grateful – a healthy son, a loving husband, and the good friends who remained at her side. Rory had not contracted the bilious fever, and that had to mean the gods and goddesses were on Audra’s side, at least sometimes.
Yet even with all that, today, the pain of her losses seemed to overshadow the good. She needed a release of some sort, and battling it out with staffs earlier had not helped. Out of nowhere, she let out a wild scream. Her voiced echoed off the trees and the gaggle of geese that had been paddling along the river flew away. Gods, that had felt good, screaming, allowing the pain and anger to rush out of her body. She screamed again and again until she grew hoarse. Any moment, knights would be along, and Audra would have to explain why she was screaming at the river’s edge like a madwoman. She’d tell them she was sad and that was it. They’d have to deal with her