Go lift your sails up for one last swell

[andhiswife]

And now the Poldarks are gone.

She doesn't even know how to process the losses anymore. She doesn't know why she's still here. How much more is she supposed to bear, exactly? There has to be a precise point where this all stops being worth the trouble. Hasn't she passed it, yet? Or is she still meant to believe this epilogue is some sort of generous gift, far better than an abrupt and undignified ending at the bottom of a cliff? Because she honestly doesn't know, anymore. She doesn't know if she wants a second chance if this is all that will come of it.

She especially doesn't know why they've left her the bloody house. She sits on the stoop, staring down at the keys in numb disbelief, and it's only because her friend wanted this that she can convince herself that this, too, isn't some kind of cruel joke.

Demelza would never be cruel. Not to her, not now.

Well. Not on purpose. Part of her can't help but wonder if this was something decided before Sam's disappearance, and they just hadn't got round to updating the paperwork. That would make sense. More sense than the thought of her knocking about what is unmistakably a family home with just a dog for company. It's absurd. What is she supposed to do with it all?

Go in would be the logical first step, but she hasn't yet worked up the nerve. After helping them move in, and visiting on several occasions, she has too clear an idea of how it ought to be. Not empty. Not silent. And certainly not hers.

Comments

[on_mans_road]

"I have been coming less," she confessed. "But it feels good to be like this again." Perhaps she would continue risking it; perhaps it was all in her mind and she just needed to let it go. Greta's gentle touch was comforting, warm against her shoulder.

"Do you stay away from it? Or have you not had the time or inclination?"

[andhiswife]

"A bit of both, I suppose," she says, dropping her gaze. "It seemed... well, once I heard about what happened back home, it seemed like it might be tempting fate, to come back. And I've been busy." Busy trying to make a life for herself here that might at least distract her from the ghost of the life she could have had. Busy watching the new tethers snap just when she'd thought she'd secured them.

It still feels like tempting fate to be here. Does it even matter, at this point?

Amalthea has no such excuse, though, and Greta's brow furrows. "I hope you haven't been forgetting," she says, and though her tone tries to be playfully scolding, there's genuine concern in her eyes.

[on_mans_road]

"No," she assured. "I haven't been forgetting... But there is something." The unicorn turned her head, looking deeper into the forest. Her ears moved as if she heard something beyond a human's knowing.

"It calls sickly to me. I don't know what it is or what it wants, but I hear it most in the forest."

[andhiswife]

"Something besides Cabeswater, you mean?" Greta asks, frowning, now. The forest has always seemed friendly enough to her -- as much as any magical forest can be. It wasn't malicious, at least. It didn't hold any true horrors. But sickly is an evocative term, and Greta resists the urge to roll her shoulders, as if to banish an itch. "That sounds... unpleasant."

A thought occurs to her, and she turns back to Amalthea curiously. "Is it... could you heal it? Is that why it calls to you?" She doesn't know how much of the lore from her world translates to the one Amalthea comes from, but unicorns do heal, don't they?

[on_mans_road]

A shiver rippled over her at the thought of going to it, of getting near enough to try to heal it.

"No," she answered. "If I went near enough, it would try to grab hold of me and not let go." She was certain of that, more than anything. It was not a weak sickness, but a corruption she felt. And it wanted her.

"It is not... a natural thing. It is not a sick animal or sick tree. It is a darkness."