NUMBERS
Numbers were easy.
Numbers and logic were not things that came so easily to magical folk as they did her. But Aurora could master that with absurd ease. Her hands would streak across the parchment, scattering the aged bark with so many complex equations that they almost fell like a meteorite shower.
Explaining the rules of the cosmos - she took on that responsibility with pride. Her scientific mind yearned for it. Yearned to answer questions unanswered. Unknown.
Numbers were easy.
Numbers didn't confuse her, didn't cut her open and twist its vicelike grip upon her heart. Numbers didn't shellshock her soul. Numbers didn't keep her awake throughout the Scottish wintry nights… thinking… tormenting… torrential…
If she could have cut out her feelings with a scalpel she would have. Watched as her flesh containing the inexplicable fire for him was sliced open and thrown into the rubbish with the rest of the undesirable materials. She could get back to her equations and her mathematics. She could be free in them once again.
But desire… hatred… love… love-hatred… hatred-love… for him… it clawed at her every being, ripping her body to shreds with its talons and leaving her for dead.
And yet she wasn't dead! What an absurd allusion to make, Aurora! Get a hold of yourself! Let them bleed out of you from your very veins and dribble down your quill and transform them into something you can explain. You're good at that, Aurora. You're good at transforming mystic into tangible.
Numbers were easy.
Why had he not come to her as an algebraic form? The stupid selfish git that he was. Why had he not walked into that room that one evening as a perfectly logical set of equations that just ached to be resolved.
Oh, she ached to resolve him. And yet she ached for his mystery. Her feelings were muddled and confusing and baffling and torturous and did she want it that way? Yes, yes, she did but no, god no, she didn't.
Give me my numbers…
Numbers were easy.
This.
Whatever this was.
This.
This was a worst kind of death.