Cas' Memories

When she ran away from home, she didn't plan on staying alive long enough to see if her parents chased her.

She knew they wouldn't anyway. But she didn't want to find out. It would complicate things if they even pretended to care.

As she gathered up supplies, she was pretending too. She didn't want to think it too directly: I'm done with this world. She was afraid that if she made too many plans, the time would come and she wouldn't be able to bring herself to do it. And then she never could.

So she packed up enough supplies to survive for a week or two. Enough to make her parents think she was just running away to run. That she might even come back. If they cared enough to count their rations anyway, if they cared enough to notice she was gone.

And down she went the southern coast of Acora.

She made an unplanned stop by the beach where she and Cephi had spent their last days together, where he was now spending his eternity. Standing there with the ocean waves hitting her chest, that was probably the closest she ever got.

But if she just kept walking until the waves swallowed her, her body would wash back up on shore. She didn't want her parents to know. Maybe in some centuries when she never appeared again, they would figure it out. But they hadn't gotten Cephi's body and they wouldn't get hers either.

She walked down the coast as long as her legs could bear it. Then she slept out in the open fields, not caring who came. No one did.

Crossing the river so wide she could barely see its edge at the horizon should have been difficult. Without a bridge, she threw herself recklessly into the water. And somehow, she came out on the other side. Despite her lack of any other athletic skill, she'd always been a strong swimmer.

She walked.

The mountains, though she only slipped along their outer rim, soon provided another opportunity. This region was deserted, and no one would ever find her. But as she dragged herself to the top of a small cliff along the water, she found herself staring out over the moons' shattered reflections rising above the black mirror. For a long time she watched. Her last look stretched on until they stood above her in the sky. And then she kept walking.

When she ran out of food, she learned to subsist, if only because starving to death wasn't a great way to go. But when the cliffs' winds whispered to her and the waves screamed her dying name, something always stopped her. Something said, one more.

She kept travelling the coast until she hit Mirorvale. Took a boat to Lasthold -- because if she was going to keep being indecisive, she didn't want to end up circling back to Nale.

And with each sunrise she lived to see the dawn of, she wasn't exactly happy. She didn't choose to go on; it just happened. But she didn't mind waking up anymore.

For a while, she just didn't mind.