Disclaimer: I don't own nightshade series. Andrea Cremer blah blah.
I don't quite know how well this went. Knocked it out in like half an hour so don't expect a miracle.
I claw my fingers into the tree. It has the misfortune of ever meeting me.
"Calm down," Penny asks. She's useless when I'm like this "Calm down Tara."
She touches my back. I bristle. My head whips round and I bare sharpened canines.
"Don't." I plead
"Tara. You can't keep reacting like this. They'll find out that he..." She drifts off.
"Do you want to hear a story?" I ask. She stutters. "Lets tell you a story."
"Tara I don't think-"
"I'm fine." I reply. I rush over to my abandoned school bag. It's semi-buried in dirt, as though a lazy dog kicked dirt over it. I pull it into the air and shake it vigorously. My hand jerks open the zip and I uncover my notebook. My hand lets the bag drop back into the ground; to its home. Frustration gnaws in my guts. I flip through pages then stop at the page of caked blood. I stride out into the opening once more and begin to read:
"The battlefield. I always thought of it as a physical thing. No. It's not is it? Because, in a way, emotions are battlefields. Aren't they? Once upon a time, all the fighting was blood. Blood. Once upon a time fighting was faced in the face of the enemy. I thought I wasn't. I used to treat a battle as a constant roar. Something that is forced upon someone. Something you could deny or it would degrade you. But it's not? I get it now. True battle, I get it, truer than lipstick or clicking heels. True battle is when your staring into the enemy and watching every bit of them fade, soul last, and you feel their warmth pour on and in to you. When you watch them struggle for their last breath. It...pops out of them. I never-" I raise my hand to wipe away the embarrassment of tears. To try urge my throat open .
"Tara?" Penny hovers her hand over my shoulder only to dart it away.
"Penny?" I ask.
"Yes?"
"Is love a battle field?"
"I..." She hesitates and I wait "I wouldn't know."
"If it was...were...is," I struggle to gather thoughts, cheeks hot both from embarrassment and tears "I think it is."
"How so?"
"Love is commitment more than blood. And yet, blood calls me. I think...love is linked with blood and battle. They all tell me to come."
"Tara-"
"Love. Battle. Blood. They hurt. And yet, I still crave them."