#maybepeace009.

If you didn't want to come back, you shouldn't have.

She doesn't say it. Inside her, the hawk is quiet but restless, not understanding why it has to be secret from Fynn now when it never was before. On the outside, she still won't speak to him.

When her barn cat one evening brought home a rabbit kit still half-alive, and it died despite all Alice's efforts to nurse it to health, as she should have known it would—she should have known better than to care for it at all—even so, even knowing better than she did, her mother had said, It's hard, isn't it? To really look at something without loving it.

Alice keeps her eyes fixed stubbornly on her hands. Her nails are clean. The grey habit, likewise, is neat and drab. She doesn't feel like herself in it, nor with her curls cropped close to her head. (When it grows back, it won't be the same hair that her sisters' fingers ran through to braid it.) But she matches the chapel with its plain stonework, or rather, blends into it. A narrow window of stained glass casts the only sliver of color across her lap.

The bright line connects her to him. She can see his muddy boots on the floor, same as before. His hand on the bench beside her, just the back of it, scarred and familiar, and it makes her want to melt into his side. All her strength is going into wrapping her arms around her middle, holding herself upright, so that does not happen.