The Cosmic Princess

Love Drought

Mist continued to talk and she finally gives Kaiya a name to the kindred spirit that had caused Mist to be a living and breathing embodiment of irony. Mason was his name. Simple. Short. And Sweet. Just like him.

As she began to talk about the love she had lost, I began to think about my own lost love. I could only imagine the pain I would feel if Ike was to be suddenly yanked out of my grasps and never to return. Mist continued to speak and I continued to try and listen to her but mind drifted to Ike.

I had reached an emotional fatigue with everything and felt withdrawn, even towards my kindred spirit. The tug and pull relationship we had these days was so tiring. Ike wanted progress, but I was just tired. One moment I was just ready to give up and call it quits because I just didn't think I had it in me anymore to try, so screw what Selene thought, yet at the same time I couldn't imagine Avril without an Ike. It was almost forbidden. He was the love of my life, and I don't think I would ever want to change that.

Despite what I had told my mother about how I would be strong and carry on, I found myself crying more than usual. I wanted Ike and I missed him and everyone else, yet I couldn't spark my desire to try. I was stuck in an emotional limbo and I didn't know how to get out of it. I was drowning and I was suffocating, yet I didn't know how to save myself. Why was finding forgiveness so hard?

The suffocating gray around me evaporated and I was blinking back the color into my life. Blinking slowly out of my reverie, a pacifying warmth was wrapping around me pushing these feelings away. Glancing up, I realized Ike was here and Kaiya and Mist were gone.

His fingers were wiping my tears and his arms were holding me close. "Stop crying, Av." His soft words were washing over me as his pained face took up my vision. "We'll get through this."

I didn't say anything and instead curled into him allowing myself this pleasure. It was almost routine now that when everything became too much for me and I begin to cry, he would appear out of the shadows and soothe the pain. Just for a while though.

Forgive or not to forgive was the question. The answer was beginning to blur more and more each day.

- - - - -

"Hey alien girl." My footing stopped and my quest to find Ivy slowed. She had said she would be busy today and she had blatantly hinted at it being best to catch up with my friends, but I liked being by myself these days unless I was hanging with Ivy and sometimes Ike.

'Alien girl' was a nickname that had been thrown at me a couple times around the village, way more when we first got here, but since my near death experience everything had calmed. The warriors seemed less wary around me, less suspicious, yet at times I would catch almost revered-like stares shot at me when it was believed I wasn't looking. I was still hearing words of gratitude from the warriors for my 'self-sacrificing' act I had done out at the flower fields and at the mating grounds.

Therefore, hearing the word "alien girl" was somewhat an insult, considering how much progression had been made with the women around the village. I was actually sort of surprised to hear it. Well, until I recognized the aggravating voice that accompanied it.

Back steeling and arms crossed against my chest, I turned around, scowl planted on my face ready for round...three. Four? Five? I don't know, I had actually lost count.

"What do you want Jerica?" Since the whole big fiasco at dinner in which Jerica basically revealed my entire past to my friends, she had been scarce. Secretly, I believed it was Alem's doing, but Ivy had made a comment about how her nose was broken and having the warriors see her with a broken nose would lead to questions which would then lead back to me which would be humiliating to her. Either way though, I was okay with it. However, now the troll had crawled out from under her bridge and was probably here to piss me off in some type of way.