sal

Nesta stood alone.

Her white nightdress billowed out behind her as the wind drifted in. The balcony doors were open, and she stood in the doorway, shrouded in darkness.

Once, she would have savored it all. She wouldn’t have expressed any of it aloud, of course, but she would have breathed in the night air and let herself escape into the glass doors and the balcony that reminded her of the one her father had promised he would build for her in their old mansion once she turned twelve. She would have watched the lights from the city and the lights from the stars and felt a little light within her wish to answer their call, to become one with the sky and the air and the earth. She would have felt so free, in the darkness, unseen; free of all expectations and rules and consequences.

Before, she would have contemplated how she looked in white. Did it contrast her skin nicely, giving her a golden glow, or did it wash her out? What color would complement it, then? After all, her wedding dress — and more importantly, her bridal lingerie — would be white. But it didn’t matter now. There would be no wedding, no marriage.

Should she be happy? Surely, she should. She wouldn’t have to worry about looking beautiful for anyone else. And any marriage she would have had would have been one of convenience. Even if her husband hadn’t been as awful as Tomas, her life would have been shackled to a stranger; one who could control what she wore and where she went and what she did. She couldn’t have been herself anymore; she would have become an object for him to own, to give him children, to look pretty on his arm.

Yes, Nesta should have been glad she had escaped all of that. Marriage was a prison and weddings were just a sham — an illusion of being bound together and of sharing your heart when really you barely knew your spouse, and anyway, your husband would surely break at least a few of his vows. Most women knew it to be inevitable; the words were just words. In sickness or in health? Yes, the wife would dote on her husband no matter what, whether he lost his leg or his hand or his mind. But a sick woman was no wife; in fact, merely taking too long to produce a son could be cause enough to be cast out. Too much sadness, too much exhaustion, too many thoughts expressed aloud would remove the ring from your finger — at best, you moved home to be the talk of the town; at worst, you’d burn (or the nut house, who would say which was worse). Yes, Nesta should have been happy, she was happy that marriage was no longer in her future. Of course she was.

Except, inside her lived a young girl. One who had believed that she would find the love of her life and chose to be wed because her lover couldn’t imagine living without her, and Nesta couldn’t either. Their wedding day would be the happiest day of her life, because it was the day they would make vows that they would live by every day, promising to love each other for eternity — supporting, encouraging, caring for one another. And her lingerie — her husband would find her beautiful no matter what, but in her lingerie, she’d look like a goddess that he wanted to worship. As they explored each other’s bodies, she’d feel divine — filled with that magical, mythical, magnificent Love. It was stupid; naive; and yet this foolish hope had lived within her for so long Nesta had almost forgotten about it.

Now, marriage was off the table, and Nesta couldn’t even be happy about it. No, she had to watch the little girl within her lose her dream, her foolish hope that she should have squashed years ago but hadn’t — couldn’t. Well, it was gone now.

There was no grand love story to be had, no proposal on the beach, no silky wedding dress.

It was just the way life went. Well, not life, because she had died — died in that Cauldron.

She’d been torn apart, every fiber of her being split and disintegrated in the endless depths of those cursed waters. It had hurt — more than anything else, ever. More than her grandmother’s firm hand, more than the soldiers that had dragged her out of bed, more than Tomas who had torn her dress and so much more. The pain had been immeasurable, her worst memories swirling with the best ones, her body in shambles as the pieces of her churned, everything turning dark — not even red, though it was impossible that she hadn’t bled, because she was nothing.

In the Cauldron’s eternal depths, in the endlessness of it all, of the omnipotent waters, she was nothing. She was the water, but she was also drowning; she was only a speck, no, not even that. Practically invisible, could barely ripple the water, was so tiny and powerless and insignificant. She had died so, unnoticed, and that should have been the end — the end of her pain, of her drowning, of her life. Only, it wasn’t. No, the Cauldron had decided to punish her once more by spitting her out, remade. She was no longer her; a new body, a new life, a stranger in and of herself.

As she stood there, on the balcony, she couldn’t appreciate the view as she once would have because how could she love the strange, beautiful unknown — the one she had always longed for, as she rushed to the port to greet her father returning from a trip and as she escaped into worlds tucked in the pages of a novel. How could she love it when she was unknown, too?

Who was this fae that stared back in the mirror, her limbs too long, her ears too pointed, everything so sharp and keen and different? She did not know. So as she breathed in the crisp air, her body was part of it all — part of this unknown, new landscape. Wondrous, perhaps, but foreign. Something to be examined with curious hands, but not a familiar shell to retreat into. Never a comforting anchor to keep her adrift as her world flipped upside down.

She no longer had the features passed down by her father and mother, her grandfather and grandmother, her great-grandfather and great-grandmother. She wasn’t shackled by their expectations, their dreams for her, the rules and norms about how she should behave that they’d tried to instill in her. Yet, they were all gone, and now the last vestiges of them had disappeared — as though they’d never existed at all. As if they, too, were so miniscule and insignificant; they were akin to characters in stories, living only in her mind.

In the darkness, she couldn’t see her body. She could appreciate that, at least — the cover of darkness. In the dark, she could be someone else — to be herself. She could pretend, she could believe that she lived in her body, that she was the human woman she’d been, that she was the naive little girl that should have died — that refused to die. She could see the world — this new world — as she would have viewed it; she could appreciate it, love it, cherish it. Marvel at its splendor, this world of boundless possibility, of endless mysteries, of a million hidden gems waiting to be discovered.

A beacon of hope, of dreams, brimming with raison d’être.

Nesta could gaze upon it, in awe, renewed from any emptiness that could threaten to consume her.

The wind promised of sweet tomorrows, of beautiful unknowns, of a kind of love that Nesta had — that all humans had, really — where you were in love with the world, with life. Even as the injustices and the expectations and the emptiness grew crushing, there was always a sunset, an autumnal leaf, a stream of sunlight that made you pause and take a deep breath, absorbing the moment within yourself so you could preserve it forever. When the pain inside grew too great and there was no way to scream, nowhere to run to, nothing to destroy, so you clutched your pillow to your mouth and screamed silently, gripping the material too hard — and if you couldn’t even do that, you tore everything to shreds in your brain — and then you were blank, empty, done; that’s when those memories — those flowers pressed between the pages of your favorite book in your mind — filled you up again, so you could keep going, keep living.

Life was short, life would end, so you had to love life while you could, even when you hated it.

The wind brought Nesta a taste of humanity, or perhaps, it merely freed that piece of herself. Where had she lost it? Had it been left behind in the Cauldron, or had it fallen to the floor when Elain, too, had died?

Or perhaps it had been when her sister, Feyre, had condemned herself to pain once more, returning to her Tomas, and Nesta had felt too raw, too human — though she was not human — as she watched her sister’s eyes take on the same look as when she’d killed an animal for the first time to feed them all.

The wind flowed so freely, carrying air from everywhere and anywhere; it traversed place and time, ripping the earth and the seas. It was the same air Nesta had breathed as she’d held a baby for the first time — Feyre, so tiny and yet so strangely strong and joyous — and the same air Nesta had breathed when she’d danced — danced til her feet ached and her back hurt and she was filled with such a delightful peace that she wanted more, she wanted forever, she wanted always.

The wind that had carried the seeds of the dandelions Elain had made all three of them blow on, insisting that the wishes would come true; the wind that caressed their bare skin with a promise of days to come as they stood on the port by the open sea, awaiting their father’s ship; the wind that accentuated their outfits as they prepared for the ball, making their ribbons fly behind them, spreading the sweet scent of their excited perfume, billowing their dresses as though they were royals in dresses with a train.

It did so now, once more, her dress flying behind her, though it was but a white nightgown. It caressed her cheeks — those were not her cheeks, but in the dark they could be, they would be, yes, they were her cheeks. In the balcony she stood, like a queen watching over her country, or like a princess locked in a tower wondering at the unknown beyond, or like an exiled girl who gazed upon a world she would never see again but had never really been a part of. She stood there with all the lights and the winds and the dark, alone. Until she wasn’t alone.

“What are you doing?”

It was his voice. She didn’t answer. She knew that he knew that she’d heard him. She wasn’t startled, though she should have been. She shouldn’t have known he was approaching but she did, now, in this new body, and, to be uncomfortably honest, she had been hyper aware of his presence even before, even when she’d been her.

What was she doing?

She had no idea. What was she doing here, in this world? Here, in this city? Here, on this balcony? She had no answers, and in the darkness, she could choose to have no questions, either.

“What are you thinking about?” He took a deep breath of the night air. The wind and the darkness whooshed through his lungs. “I bet there’s a million thoughts running through your head right now. Do you want to share any of them?”

How could he read her so well, far better than anyone else ever had, even though they had only met recently? He should have been an unknown, just like the rest of them — just like the rest of the world — and he was, but it also felt like she’d known him all her life and had been saving a spot for him within her; the unknown between them was something else, like the whispers of a promise, though what exactly that promise would be would remain to be seen.

“You don’t know me,” she said finally, to the air, to the lights, to Cassian.

How could he know her when she didn’t even know herself?

“I want to,” he answered after a soft silence. His voice was low, steady, a touch of rough huskiness coating the edges.

She wanted to, too. She wanted to know herself — who was this fae female? Who was Nesta; this Nesta who was an amalgamation of a million memories and versions of herself — a woman, a human, a naive girl, and beyond: a princess, a merchant, a dancer, an explorer, a sister, a daughter, a reader, a lover, a tiny speck, a ball of light, a dead body, a gust of wind, everything and nothing and something, all at once.

She wanted to know.

She wanted him to know, too. And she wanted to know him, too.

She wanted to breath in the dark air with him and know the thoughts that swirled in his mind; all the pieces of himself that were spread by the four winds, that the earth and the skies and the seas took from him and gave to him; all the thoughts and emotions and parts of him that couldn’t possibly exist together yet were intertwined within him in a way that made no sense yet made perfect sense.

She wanted to know the bits of him that were unknown even to him; she wanted to explore his memories and his body and his heart, she wanted to look at the lights with him and within him. She wanted to breathe the winds and savor the darkness and stand on the balcony with him.

Nesta reached a hand out behind her, where she knew he stood. Her fingers trailed down his arm, tracing his skin — which sent tingling sparks through her — before slipping her hand into his. His fingers curled around hers, understanding her silent reply — understanding so much of her unknown, of her vastness, of her.

Their fingers, hands, hopes intertwined on the balcony, where they faced that shroud of darkness together.

__________

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