She rounds the corner, and any tension gathered in my shoulders instantly dissipates at the sight of her. She is only young, perhaps around my age -- whatever that number is now, its exact value has slipped my mind -- but she encompasses everything I cannot be. Her dress is the colour of sunshine. Her eyes are a soft, pale blue. Her golden hair, draped freely over her shoulders, seems to glow in the dim lamplight I see by. She is light itself, and it always amazes me that such a girl should find time to enter the place where there can only be darkness.
I am at the bars in moments, hands wrapping around the bars. My smile is warm. It is not an instinct as with my flames, but she draws those same feelings to the surface, the kind I can grow lost in.
Yet as she steps fully into the lamp’s glow, my smile gradually sinks. Though she smiles back, its edges are strained, and the damp traces of tears highlight her delicate cheeks.
What reason would light have to cry?
“Are you okay?” I ask, not brave enough to lift my voice above a whisper.
“Oh, no. I’m quite alright,” she says, the lilt that of a songbird. At least, what I imagine such beautiful birds to sound like. My memories of them are nothing more than faint imprints.
I cannot tell whether the light tone is forced. My gaze lingers on her tears. “Are you sure?”
She nods, her hand swiping at her cheeks. The glimmer of her eyes could easily be the beginnings of more tears, or simply her own light shining through. Whatever the case, I don’t wish to push her any further.
We fall into a brief silence, but she soon breaks it, as always is the way. She has far more to say than I do. “I saw the first lapwing today.”
“Lapwing?” I frown. I’m sure I recall her mentioning them, but what they are slips my mind.
“A bird,” she supplies. “They always come when winter starts to set in, down from the mountains.”
So it is winter already. It seems only yesterday she was telling me of the bright summer sunshine, and the emerald shine of the trees. I lean in closer. “What do lapwings look like?”
“They have a white chest, and brown feathers with streaks of green on their backs. They’re quite pretty. My father doesn’t think so, though. He calls them strutting pigeons.” She laughs, and it’s such a gentle sound I can’t help but join her.
“Any bird is better than a pigeon,” I say.
I’m only repeating her own comment back to her, but she giggles all the same. “Exactly. Oh, and lapwings also have this…” She pauses to gesture, tracing long coils jutting from the top of her head. “Like feathered crowns. That’s how I recognise them.”
“Crowns? Your father might have a point. They sound like show-offs.”
“They are a bit,” she admits, a spark in her eye. “But my favourite thing about them is the sound they make.”
“You seem to know everything about lapwings,” I remark. To me, she knows everything about everything, however, so perhaps I’m giving her a little too much credit. “Go on.”
“In the country, they call them peewits. Because they make a sound like… pee-wit.” She stretches out the first syllable and raises the pitch to form a shrieking bird call. She repeats it, and I mimic her, enjoying the way the noise wails.
Before I know it, we’re calling like lapwings again and again, and then we’re laughing, crouching down either side of the bars. The sound echoes throughout the halls, too loud, but I don’t care. It’s the perfect sound to fill the darkness. I don’t want it to stop.
But eventually it has to. She sits down, her shoulder resting against black bars, and I join her. A final giggle escapes us both. With a jolt, I notice hers cut short. When I glance over at her, she’s staring down at her hands. The sorrow that weighed on her as she walked in has returned all too quickly.
My joy ebbs away. I stare at her, then lick my lips. Do I ask her if she is okay again? But what is the question’s purpose, when I can see she is hurting?
Several seconds tick by before she speaks. “I’ll miss this,” she says, voice fragile, without looking up at me.
Panic twists within me, a jabbing knife. I wrap my hand around a bar. “Are you…” I trail off, afraid to speak the fearful thought aloud. “Why?”
Finally, she glances up. The look in her eyes, so devoid of their blue light, is a claw of darkness I have to fight to keep from the surface. “They…”
She takes a deep breath. I hold mine. Her silence freezes me in place.
A single tear slips down her cheek. “They want to send me away.”
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