Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 77692 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 388(@200wpm)___ 311(@250wpm)___ 259(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77692 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 388(@200wpm)___ 311(@250wpm)___ 259(@300wpm)
He’s a little you, Nowas.
After I offered to stop, Luna just shook her head and let her tears fall, asking me to show another. No matter how long I remained sitting on the ledge, she stayed with me until her eyes drooped closed, and even then, I held her while she slept until the moon passed on again and she woke up to another day of standing by me through the unending grief.
The last message from Jozay makes it slightly easier. At least, I can tell myself there is a whole lifetime of happiness ahead of me even if this part will be hard for a while. A bit of numbing balm to the open wound, but not even healing this type of injury will make it go away. I already know I will miss my mother forever.
For all the days of my life that still remain.
I will always miss her.
“Oh, did you want to come in to eat this time?”
The soft question my mate asks is the same one I ask myself. I’m just as surprised to be standing when she returns from the house with a tray of food for us to eat as she is, frankly. I’ve been content to simply sit on the ledge for however long I found myself there again, listening to the drums, and observing the skies for all this time. In between the moments when Luna forces me to come back to the present where she takes constant care of me in one way or another.
Making me eat. Taking me to bathe so I can feel something else, like the water and her hands washing me, instead of the heavy hollowness inside my chest. Letting me talk her to sleep again and again. Oddly, talking does help my heart. Sometimes. So, I do that more. Or try.
Other times, I don’t want to say anything at all. Luna never seems to mind as long as I’m doing whatever it is that I need to get through it, and I let her help me all the while. If there is a balm that soothes me through the endless spiral of sadness and agony, it’s her.
I need to remember to tell her that far more often.
“I’m not sure, but … it’s time for me to move,” I murmur as the drums begin to feel as if it matches the tempo of the blood rushing in my ears. “Check on my father, maybe.”
“The messenger was along with word.”
“Oh?”
“A little while ago,” she says, shrugging. “He did report that Nowas was seen coming and going from his rooms, so that might be something good. Maybe?”
Hope flares to life inside me. Activity from my father, even if it is just day to day living, means he’s started to process and absorb the loss of my mother. Like myself, he’s at least willing to get up and take care of his own needs.
It’s … something.
Right now, I’ll cling to anything in front of me if it even suggests that my father will make it through what many Hallans before him have not.
“Maybe that’s what I’ll do, then,” I say, stepping off the rock face. “I could go for a walk to stretch my legs, anyway.”
Luna raises one eyebrow as I close the distance between us, coming to stop before her where I bent down to steal a kiss she isn’t ready for. I just want to see that smile light up her face. It’s another bright spot in my dreary heart.
“To what, check on your father?” she asks.
“If he’s finally up and around for no one, then I bet he’ll get up and around for his son. We’ll even take the long way, and you can visit with Selina and Fate. I’ll pick up my brother to come along with me.”
Luna peers up at me, considering that. “You don’t think giving him a bit of time might be best? Even if it is one change of moon, let him think and breathe a bit without his sons worrying over him. I’m sure he knows you are.”
I shake my head. “There have been no changes from him in too long. This means something.”
I can’t be talked out this.
She seems to understand. “Okay, so you can find out what it is after we have something to eat. Deal?”
“I could wait to eat,” I reply, something more important weighing on my mind.
Luna holds the tray of drinks and sliced fruit with sweet bread a bit higher as if to make her point that not eating won’t be an option. “A little while ago you were hungry. Said so yourself. That’s not changed just because you heard your father moved from one room to another, Halun.”
She holds my gaze and doesn’t drop that no-nonsense expression of hers until I take a piece of red fruit from the tray and pop it into my mouth.