I am sitting quietly in the little thatched hut by the shore, a scroll lying open and forgotten across my legs, my slender, long-fingered hands still, almost waiting, in my lap. There are sounds beyond the split wooden frame; timeless sounds of ocean and rock and the endless wash of sand into the sea. It seems an effort I do not wish to make to hear them, even to use them to mark the time between what I can not, will not, remember and the reality of my life here in this little hut by the endless water.
I have not had a companion within the little hut since I woke, screaming and sick, on the rough rope hammock in the corner of the room some days, weeks or might it be months now? I know, in a vague, disconnected sort of way, that there are people somewhere and in some place that might wish they knew where I was, that might love me, might miss me.
When I do not know who I am, how can I be expected to know who they are?
Caring for them is a thought soon forgotten as the unread scroll tumbles to the floor among the other detritus I have found in the five heavy bags laying by the door. Are these things, the little treasures I have found and discarded in their depths, even mine or some other weary traveler, some other person who belongs to this world? Four of the packs, fashioned of buttery-soft leather with a thick, beautiful amethyst lining, carry a curious embroidery within, a word in darkest green thread: Keelyn. It does not seem like that would be my name and the thought has my hands fluttering into my lap like the birds I sometimes see wheeling outside of my window, cawing to the sky their pain and dreams and hope.
At the thought of the birds I lift my eyes to the window. Two glowing eyes, the color of the pretty thread in the bags, stare back at me from a whiskered, almost perplexed, muzzle. It is the cat, large enough to ride, that stalks among the marsh grasses, her white coat with its zigzagging black marks no longer gleaming as part of me believes it should but a matted, muddied mess. She is waiting patiently for me to remember her name, to remember why she would stay so close to a cabin far from where she should be hunting, with a woman who looks at her with blank eyes the color of starshine. She is waiting for the person who loves her, the someone I can not bring myself to remember.
I rise jerkily to my feet, my limbs stiff and sore from holding the same position for most of the day, the long, simple white dress that I have not bothered to wash sticking to the thin sheen of sweat that coats my pale purple skin. I straighten it almost absently, the faded, unnecessary little black velvet bow below my breasts hopelessly crushed by my carelessness. I know it is not my usual way with clothes, or at least not the way of the person who owns the bags at the door and the armor that languishes in a corner. The stitched leather breastplate is well-oiled and strikingly yellow, the long leather robe sinuous and beautiful where it should look ridiculous, all garishly green and purple.
I wonder idly sometimes why a person would need two different chest-pieces.
The pants are simple, more leather, more shine and careful stitching, the gloves tougher but tended carefully, for while they had formed to my hands like a second skin, they had slid on like a dream, soft and rich and warm. I had scrabbled to take them off in a sort of rage. Even the strange, clawed bracers were well cared for and oddly beautiful. It is the staff, though, that always manages to stir my senses, to change the tang of the hot, salty sea air of now into the foreign and dear and then scent of grass and dirt and love, if love had a scent, dark and mysterious and somehow calm under a slick coating of chaos.
I carefully avoid the magical weapon now, as much as I can in such a tiny, untidy space, skirting its needs as I ignore the gnawing ache in my belly that tells me I have forgotten to eat again. The large, sea-green shard at the staff's tip sparkles dangerously in the weakening afternoon light, the runes along its slick, wooden shaft winking at me, an almost malevolent reminder that I often forget to eat, often forget to bathe, often forget to use the lovely ivory brush with the soft bristles on the thick, straight, heavy tangle of aquamarine hair that spills down over my slender back.
As I turn back to the window, to the patiently watching eyes of the beautiful animal who regards me silently in return, I wrap my thin arms around my thin body and wonder, for not the first or last time in this lonely, desolate place of exile on the seashore, if there are sins I have committed, people I have wronged, reasons I have been left anchorless among a shifting, ever-changing, ever-painful sea of my own despair. The cat mrowls, softly, plaintively, lifting her heavy, sandy front paws to the windowsill and I start, my full, pouting mouth forming a word that has no sound:
Adore.
From the distant, disappointed look the cat gives me, the way her ears slick back even as she drops her paws from the windowsill, trailing seaweed and sand, it is not hers. It belongs, then, to me.
I do not know what it means.
As I have for so many days and nights in this hollow, empty space that is more inside of me than without, I sink down to the floor among the scattered pieces of someone else's life, my slender, long-fingered hands still, almost waiting, in my lap.
My sins must be vast, that I have been waiting so long.