Shadows of the Dawnwhispers
If I could just let go, I'd be set free...
I should sleep. My body's exhausted, aching in all the familiar ways. Wounds earned and never quite healed, but my mind won't let me.
Every time I close my eyes, I see her face. Not just as she is now, standing in the doorway of that half-built house with the void still clinging to her like smoke, But as she was. Before. Before everything fell.
She was just a girl then. My sister. My shadow. Always a step behind with her bow too big for her hands and her questions too big for the world. And I was the one who swore I’d keep her safe. I did a damn fine job, didn’t I?
I can still hear her voice last night, quiet, shaking, like she didn’t know if she had the right to speak the pain aloud. How could I have missed it? Gods, how could I have walked away again and again, pretending distance would somehow protect her, protect me? How many times did she wait for me to come home? How many times did I pass through those woods and never look back? Every damn step of mine was a betrayal wearing the skin of mercy.
I tell myself it was to spare her, to spare myself, to not open old wounds. But truth is, I was a coward. The one thing I swore I'd never be. I faced demons, horrors, monsters that wore the skin of friends and none of them ever scared me like the thought of losing her again.
So I let her suffer alone. Even after she clawed her way back from whatever nightmare realm stole her, alone. And when she finally found me again, what did I do? I pushed her further into the dark.
She told me she thought about ending it. Ending herself. Because I left. Because I stayed gone.
Light help me, I held her, but it wasn’t enough. A hug can’t erase years of abandonment. It can’t burn away the void whispering in her mind or undo the weight of my silence. But maybe... maybe it's not too late to do right by her. Maybe it starts with showing up. Staying.
I don't know how to fix what I’ve broken. But I know I’m done running from it.
Tomorrow, we try again. Even if all I can do is sit beside her in that half-built house, listening to the wind in the ruins of our past. She deserves that much. And more.
Sleep will come when it wants. But for now, guilt is my blanket, and I’ll wear it, because I earned it. And because it’s time I stopped pretending I didn’t.
