Elfealin

But then the Fracture happens. And the 67 years of blood and death and sorrow and pain and loneliness. And it would make you grow up, wouldn’t it? It would smother the openness, it would make you bitter, it would murder your inner child and disintegrate the corpse. It would make you build walls, and grow thick skin, and do everything to stop feeling so it doesn’t hurt so much. But can you really do it when you’re painted as that bright child your mother remembers? When the child-like features and openness are literally the very base of your being?

And so we have our Verso, almost-a-hundred-years-old Verso, stuck with it. The feelings are still there. The walls break from the softest gust of wind. You see the death of Expedition after Expedition after Expedition, and it doesn’t hurt less. Every time feels like the first time. You can learn to mask it, sure, but under the mask every wound and every loss feels fresh as if experienced by a child who never knew grief — because, in a sense, it is.

And you crave love — god, do you crave love. Because, in your mother’s eyes, you were her little boy who needed her, and she painted it into you as well. She probably didn’t mean to, it probably wasn’t a conscious choice, none of it was — but it hurts nonetheless. And it doesn’t go away. Nothing does. Nothing ever will. And you can’t protect yourself from it, because under all the masks you are still you — still the son your mother painted you to be. And you can’t end it, because she loves you too much. And she isn’t even your mother. And she doesn’t even love you.