When I turned up in Moss, the town took me in without question. They didn’t ask me anything. They saw to it that my needs were met and followed my lead when it came to sharing information about my past. Folk assumed me to be either an orphan or a runaway. If the latter, they expected my parents to show up any day looking for a scraggly, grumpy girl in need of a bath. After a year with no one coming for me, an orphan I became in their eyes. I let them all believe that to this day. It was an easier story to claim.
“No. I’m from Cenawind.” I wiped at my running nose.
Hesper let out a whisperedfuck. Cenawind was a remotevillage, sequestered on an island in the Barren Sea, but most had heard of it. The folk there were distinctly terrible, and they chose to separate themselves from that which they disdained—meaning anyone who wasnothuman.
Dwindle might have been full of monsters, but Cenawind was full of hatred.
“That was where I spent my childhood,” I said, trying to blink away the oncoming tears. Hesper handed me a handkerchief. “My parents were extremely poor, so when the seer came and told them their child would have this great magic, they thought their struggles were over. They would become a couple to be revered rather than slandered and spit upon. Perhaps I’d have alchemy magic and turn everything into precious riches. Or maybe I’d be born with a magic no one even knew of. The possibilities were endless, until they were nowhere to be found—I was just another child, impossibly inadequate in their eyes.”
“You showed no signs of magic at all?” Hesper prodded gently.
“Not a shred,” I said bitterly. “My earliest memories are of them shouting at me about this seer and this magic destined to be mine.Show it, girl, they’d say, as if I were hiding it from them. But I could give them nothing, no matter how much I wanted to. As I grew older, they grew harsher, and I thought I might die of loneliness…”
Hesper sucked in a breath. I pressed on.
“The worst were the other days, though, when I saw a glimmer of what my parents could have been. Sometimes, Mother would sit me down and put flowers in my hair. Buttercups.” My voice broke. “She’d take me out to our garden, and we’dwork alongside each other. That’s when I fell in love with gardening; it was the first place I’d ever really known love.”
The worst part of the story was coming, and I steeled myself. Maybe this was the last time I’d ever have to tell the story. Then it could be laid to rest. And Hesper would finally understand how unmagical my life and myself really were.
“I loved them so much that it felt like an aching hole in my chest. But they resented me. I reminded them of everything they hated about themselves. So that hole in my chest eventually filled with resentment, too. And on my thirteenth birthday, my parents gave me a bag with a loaf of bread and one dress, and told me to leave and never come back. So I did. And you know what the saddest part of all of it was? I tried to hug them before I left.” Tears were running down my cheeks in rivulets.
“Clara.” Hesper’s voice, achingly kind, split my heart right down the middle.
After all this time, I still hated that I went for the hug. I hated that I still thought about that moment, that I still wanted it. I hated that somewhere inside of me lived a little girl waiting for her mother to put flowers in her hair again. And I’d never been able to move past it, to leave that girl behind. It was why I’d chosen to live life by myself, to keep love at a safe distance. I’d lived a life where love was all I wanted, and it was never given. And it almost ruined me. Almost. But I’d walled up my heart just in time, kept it safely locked behind so much stone and overgrown ivy, it would never face that pain again.
“How did you get from the westernmost isles all the way to Moss? You had to travel over the Barren Sea. You were just a child.” Hesper began to pace the room.
“I don’t know,” I said numbly. “There is very little that I remember from my journey from Cenawind to Moss. Bits and pieces come up, but sometimes I think something protected me, guided me even, to Moss. I remember sleeping in the forest and a bird bringing me food; I remember getting sick on a boat and a kind man holding my hair back. I remember feeling thirsty, and flowers opening up to let me drink from them. My memories are foggy, honestly.”
I paused, smiled ruefully. “I do remember wondering if, finally, I had magic—all of these strange things kept happening to me, surely something otherworldly had to be transpiring. I was just a child, though, riddled with sadness, and I’m sure the only magic was that I managed to live at all. But then, there was Moss. Andthenthere was magic.”
“I see.” Hesper’s brows furrowed. “And your parents, they never…” Hesper trailed off, her question hanging in the air.
“No, they never came for me. I don’t know what happened to them.” But I thought about them every day. Wherever they were, perhaps they’d found happiness far away from the girl who loved them so.
Silence followed, and I relinquished my place by the hearth and retired to the bed. The story had emptied me entirely. I closed my eyes, hoping for darkness to slow my racing thoughts. A weight settled onto the bed behind me, Hesper’s familiar shape enveloping my back.
“And that’s why Moss is so important to you then. It’s not just your home. It’s your Haven. It’s what saved you,” Hesper said.
I nodded into my pillow, my throat bobbing as I tried to stifle sobs.
“I will get you back home. I promised you that at the beginning of this journey, and I will promise you again. You have my word,” she whispered into my ear, stroking my hair absentmindedly.
I nestled closer to her, relishing the strength and heat. We stayed like that for a while, our breath and the crackling fire the only sounds in the room.
She began pulling away, readying to lie down for the night. I grabbed her hand and turned toward her.
“Sleep here. With me,” I said softly, a raw need pouring out of me before I could stifle it down.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” I said with conviction. I’d lived my life long enough stuffing down every impulse and desire. Tonight, I didn’t want to ration my wants. Tonight, I wanted to lie next to someone who knew something about me no one else did.
She tried to remove her hands from mine, but this time, I tugged her in close to me. Then suddenly one of her hands cradled the back of my head. Her face was inches away from mine. One move and my mouth would be on hers. The thought sent my body back into the familiar wildfire that always seemed to be burning around her. She placed a knee between my thighs, steadying herself as she held me. I kept down a moan at the movement.
“Clara.” My name sounded like a prayer on her lips.
My breathing quickened. She leaned in, grazing my lips with hers. My eyes fluttered closed, and my world exploded and narrowed all at once. She leaned in again, and I tilted my head up to meet her mouth more fully. She nipped at my bottom lip, and I sucked in a breath.
