CANNOT BE SEEN

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Chapter 3

"We dance round in a ring and suppose, while the secret sits in the middle and knows." Robert Frost

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The early evening wind was cold and cruel. In its powerful gusts and angry force it howled in intense anguish. The wind's despair whipped the drizzling rain into an icy furore, for the dismal sky had seemed to open up and weep bitterly. The trees moaned in grief as they bowed down in hopeless sorrow. The whole world seemed to mourn violently the death Noah Percy.

Ivy stood, among the roar of mother nature and the whisper of the other members of the village with a far-away look in her unfocused eyes.

"Ivy,"

A hand on her shoulder pulled her away from the haunting memories. She turned and blinked at her father's fierce color.

"Are you all right?" Mr. Walker leaned in close to be heard.

Ivy smiled bravely and nodded. She was anything but all right. Her father hesitated only momentarily before squeezing his daughter's shoulder and moving on to stand by Mr. And Mrs. Percy. She let out a breath of relief that dissipated into the air with a hiss. It seemed the whole village had asked her if she was 'all right'. At the moment, she wanted nothing more than to scream at the top of her lungs.

As a voice droned on, words of memorial carried away with the wind, Ivy's mind floated back to thoughts of Noah.

Noah had loved her. The reason Noah had stabbed Lucius was his love for her. He had loved her enough to hurt Lucius, his only other true friend, to have her to himself. The act was selfish, yes, but done in love. Everything... Lucius's pain, her journey through the woods, and finally Noah's demise, were all caused by Ivy's being with Lucius. Her selfish wish for love had caused all this suffering and pain. One love to sacrifice another was not right.

Lucius had been watching Ivy for all of the time since the funeral had been commenced. He saw the pain on her face as plain as day and it caused a pang of agony to strike deep in his chest. He wanted more than anything to make her truly happy once again. So, with one hand propping him solidly against a temporary cane, he reached out and took hold of Ivy's cold, clammy hand. He rubbed her fingers gently to warm them.

Ivy started silently in surprise at the touch. She wanted to move closer to Lucius, really, she did. But, instead she pulled her hand from his grasp and crossed her arms around herself. She could not see the look of hurt and disappointment this provoked on Lucius's face, but it was there all the same. He watched her for a moment before turning back to the service dejectedly.

Ivy let out a strangled sob that was muffled by the wind and tightened her arms around herself. She felt a stab of misery, but it did not overwhelm her feeling of guilt. One love to sacrifice another was not right. Isn't that what she had done? Sacrifice Noah's love, without a second thought, for her love of Lucius. And now he lie in the wooden casket. Dead. And it was all her fault.

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Lucius stood, for the rest of the service, in a torrent of mild insecurities and deep concerns. He knew Ivy was mourning Noah, the whole village was. He could feel the heaviness in his heart for his lost friend Noah, of course, but, he could also feel the lightness, the love in his heart for Ivy. Could she not feel both at once? She had been unnaturally quiet, since they had left his house, and distant, but not deliberately avoiding him until right now. What had generated this he did not know but he would ask, he told himself, right after the service.

The stormy weather had calmed, leaving the air chilly and damp, drops of condensation had settled on the grass like glittering diamonds and the wind had lost its voice and fury. It had abated into an idle breeze that played with the now gently swaying trees. The lull in the storm made Ivy all the more angry. When the weather reflected how she felt on the inside it made her feelings a lot easier to deal with. Now that all was calm, it made her feel contained and she was contemplating turning and running, no matter how rude it would be to the memory of Noah. Thankfully for her, the memoriam was brought to a conclusion at that very moment. Also, she thought, thankfully for Lucius, who was swaying slightly on his feet, not used to standing for such a long time.

Everyone quietly started to filter away from the grave site, Mr. And Mrs. Percy staying behind. Lucius let out a small noise of strain as he shifted his feet and Ivy silently reached out and took a hold of his arm, helping him turn and start walking back towards his house. After a few moments of silent, slow walking, Lucius broke the stillness with a voice full of evident physical strain.

"Ivy..."

"Lucius, you should not have been standing for so long, you are straining yourself." Ivy said quickly, cutting off whatever it was Lucius was trying to say. She didn't want to get into the conversation Lucius did, she knew.

"I am all right." He whispered after a very long hesitation.

As Ivy's mind raced to find something to say before Lucius spoke again, Lucius's mother walked up to them.

"Lucius, you should have went to rest some time ago...you are going to hurt yourself...I do not know what that doctor was thinking..." Alice helped Ivy support her son up the mellow hill as she spoke with motherly concern.

Lucius did not respond, but his mother did not seem to think anything of it. Ivy saw this as an opening to get away.

"Mrs. Hunt, can you help Lucius home alone? I would...like to go talk to my father."

Lucius felt the way her hands trembled in their hold of his arm and when his mother answered with an "Of course, Dear." he felt the way she pulled her hand away from him as if he had burned her.

She turned from Lucius's color and walked quickly away, as fast as one could walk without breaking into a run. Her abrupt get away shocked Lucius.

...what had he done?

"Ivy!" He called after her, but she did not turn back, her steps did not even falter.

"Lucius, keep your voice low. Be respectful." His mother whispered, referring to the mourners, saying something to her son she thought she'd never say. She did not notice, though, how Ivy had gone off in the way opposite of her father. Lucius did. It made him feel all the worse and he bowed his head as his mother helped him up their steps.

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Ivy heard Lucius call out to her and she wanted to turn and run back to him but she didn't. She couldn't. She didn't want him to see the tears in her eyes.

She had no idea where she was running, as long as it was away. Away from the awkward, painful silence and the grieving and the crying and the guilt. Everything was overwhelming her and she went to the only place she could think of right now. The quiet room.

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Ivy stood in front of the Hunts' house and knocked sharply on the door.

It had been nearly two hours since she had left the funeral.

She had hastened to the quiet room and then perched on the steps and just sat in the rapidly cooling breeze for close to an hour. Just sitting and thinking and crying. The thinking was the hardest. It hurt to think of Noah. It physically hurt, deep in her chest. When Lucius was ill, it was easy to push these thoughts out of her head and focus on only her engaged. But, now…now, it was nearly all she could think about, it was suffocating her.

Her mind was also over occupied by the way Lucius's color had muddied slightly after she evaded him. She could tell how Lucius was feeling just by being near him, but the color made it unavoidable and she had to keep her eyes from him, and she knew he had noticed her neglect. She knew. But, she wanted to shield him from these things she had done, these things she knew. Deep down she knew it was wrong, but she just wasn't ready to deal with that yet.

She had been buried in these thoughts when her father had interrupted them. She had seen his color coming and was glad to see it. By then she was craving advice. Anything to help her, even to simply talk about it. And her father was the best person for that. He was the only person she could talk to that knew about Noah and everything else going on in her life.

Her father sat down next to her, and before he had even time to say 'Hello', she had started to blurt out her thoughts. Her father sat there patiently until she had finished, her having too hard a time breathing to go on, and then gave her a kiss on the forehead and some comforting words of condolence. Then some words of truth.

"Ivy, it seems to me that you need to speak with Lucius. You argued with me for quite a time to get permission to tell him about the creatures and you have told him nothing yet. I know you want to protect him, but he must know what is going on in that head of yours. I know 'tis difficult, and you can take your time with it, Ivy, but not too long, you understand. I tried to protect you for so long from the dangers of the things beyond our borders, but I realized, finally, that you had to know the truth. Lucius deserves the truth too, Ivy. Is that not what you told me?"

It was. She had argued with her father, trying to convince him into letting her tell Lucius everything when he awoke. At the time she was arguing in a fit of anger at Lucius's failure to awake. She wanted the permission to tell him when he awoke because it was something to help convince herself that he would awake. And now he had. And he deserved to know the truth. Not just about the creatures, the towns but about everything she had been feeling in the last couple of days, and the horrible horrible thing she had done to Noah.

Ivy brought her hand up and knocked again, confidently, and it was only a moment before the door was opened.

"Ivy," Alice's surprise was evident in her voice, for good reason. The sky was lit only by the low moon and the village's lanterns that were flaming in the night.

"I apologize, again, Mrs. Hunt, but I really must speak with Lucius." Ivy pleaded gently.

After a short hesitation, "Oh, of course, please come inside." She opened the door for Ivy and let her by.

"Sit down, I will go fetch Lucius," Alice ushered Ivy in carefully before hurrying down the hall.

Ivy groped blindly before her hands found a chair and she sat down stiffly, setting her cane down on floor and listening anxiously to the muffled voice of Mrs. Hunt until she heard the uneven footsteps.

"Ivy,"

She turned to see Lucius's color coming slowly into the room, his cane thudding quietly on the floor.

"Lucius, you should be resting, I should not have come." Ivy replied quietly, now wishing she had thought this over more.

"No, Ivy, please, I want to talk to you." He hobbled to the chair opposite her and sat down.

Ivy smiled a little, "Lucius Hunt wants to talk..."

His color brightened and she suddenly lost the courage to speak what she had come to say, so she sat in silence. After a drawn out pause, Lucius spoke.

"Ivy...did I do something wrong?" He whispered into the still air.

His words had erased everything Ivy had rehearsed saying on the walk over here, they shocked her so, that her words came slightly delayed. "No! No, it is not anything you have done, Lucius. It is not."

He waited for her to go on and, finally, she did.

"I...I told my sister, when we announced our betrothal, that to sacrifice one love for another was wrong..."

Lucius did not understand what Ivy was trying to say so he sat without speaking.

Ivy had decided to start with the easiest point of discussion: Why she had been avoiding Lucius today. It really hadn't been fair to him, she realized, without explaining what was plaguing her thoughts.

She took a deep breath and broke the silence.

"Do you not agree, Lucius?" Ivy prompted.

"Yes," He answered quickly for the sake of agreeing.

"...and I had considered my sister's love...but, not Noah's..."

Lucius still did not understand, and he told her so.

"I sacrificed Noah's love for me, for the love that we share, Lucius, do you not see that?" Her voice was slightly higher pitched in worry.

He let out a breath. He was not fond of the way this conversation was going. Not at all fond.

"You did not sacrifice his love, Ivy. You did nothing wrong." He assured her hastily, his tone emphatic.

"But, I did...I did, Lucius! I was selfish, I thought of myself before I thought of how Noah would feel. And now...now I feel like I can't..." Ivy was having trouble finding her words, but Lucius filled in the blanks.

"You do not want to marry me anymore." He said stolidly, as if it were a fact and not a question.

"No! No, Lucius." Ivy answered immediately with fear in her voice. She quickly moved to kneel on the floor and felt for Lucius's hand, taking it tightly in her own grasp and squeezing it.

"I love you," Ivy started quietly, "I want to marry you more than anything I have ever wanted. It is just that I feel such guilt for what I did to Noah...I do not know how to make it disappear..." She breathed out, staring at Lucius's now fiery color.

There was a long pause where neither of them said a word.

"And I love you," Lucius whispered finally, before leaning down slowly, taking Ivy's face gently between his hands, and capturing her lips in a soft kiss. And in that instant, Ivy no longer felt her overwhelming guilt. It had, for the moment at least, disappeared.

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TBC

Until next time…