no love like your love

Epitaph had asked her to accompany him to the thicket, and well it had spiked her anxiety, she had agreed. She tried not to show him how she felt about that. How the memories of running in circles in the tall grasses with the smell of smoke and the heat of the fire, coming closer, closer, still gave her nightmares. She had been certain for a moment that she would die.

Now the thicket was gone, the tall grasses she had so enjoyed playing in, where gone. The flat earth looked barren and wrong, and as she and her uncle approached, she turned her head away and almost cried.

She didn’t want to think about the herb garden her and Epitaph had worked on. How it had been something they could do together. Poem had Shaye and her mentoring to be Alpha, she had Epitaph and the herb garden. Now one was gone, and she could feel her Uncle close to tears beside her.

She braved crossing over for his sake, of waking through the hot earth and wincing as she felt it in her tender toes. She stuck close to her uncle, barely seeing the surroundings until he stopped suddenly beside her. She looked up to see what had caught his attention so, and would find the river stones that had marked their garden. A cry escaped her, and she lurched forward, looking for the spot where she had planted her first flower, and waited day and night for it to grow. How she had almost damaged its roots, and Epitaph had fixed it, helped it to grow like he possessed magic of the earth. It was gone, there was not a single piece of evidence that it had ever been at all. The girl wailed at her lose, digging at the earth like she could find the flower hidden there.