Beneath, part five

The young girl looked out across the darkness as a primal terror roused within her. It was too dark here. She slid from under the covers and crawled along the floor to the small bedroom’s door. Ma Demy had already fallen asleep so it was no bother for Sasha to slip out towards the hearth. She carefully made her way to the diminished fire, and quickly called it back to life.  She curled into a ball in front of the dim light it cast. She let the warmth wash over her in a wave of soothing calm. Her panic flowed from her like water in a stream as the fire warmed her body.

She could hear the footsteps coming across the floor but was unwilling to turn away from the comforting light of the flame. Bryan’s son James sat down next to her on the floor. He crossed his legs in front of him as he too looked into the fire.

“You don’t like the dark do you,” he stated more than asked.

Sasha looked on into the fire. The flames wrapped themselves around the logs in a thick blanket of lapping light. It was beautiful, and terrifying all at the same time. The soldiers had written a ballad comparing her to a flame when she led them into battle, but she felt it had always been a lie for she was not nearly as beautiful as the golden light of the fire. She was terrifying to be sure, but never beautiful.

“I knew you were special from the first moment I saw you,” he continued, “You probably left the north because people always demanded to see you perform like they did today, didn’t you.”

She glanced at him from the corner of her eye. “Do you really want to know?” she whispered from behind her knees. He nodded vigorously. She turned her gaze back to the flames as they continued to lick away the logs. “I left because I couldn’t give them what they wanted. I left because I was broken, and couldn’t go back to being what I had been during the war. I wasn’t strong enough anymore to be the person they needed, so I left to find a place where I could be the person I have become.”

She glanced back out of the corner of her eye to see his reaction. He was looking at her. He didn’t seem so young in the light of the fire. She could see a beauty there that deep inside she pined for but could never have. No man would want her, no matter how foolish they might be. Not if they knew the truth.

“It was unfair of them to expect too much from you,” he told her, “It was unfair of them to put such heavy expectations on your shoulders. You’re just one woman.”

Sasha turned her gaze once more to the fire. It was unfair to force a child to grow up as fast as she had been made to, but she did not feel cheated, not anymore. She felt sad to have missed out on so many experiences that were supposedly her right. She felt grief that she couldn’t help those that had counted on her. But more than anything she felt tired. She felt wrung like an old dish rag, and wanted only to be left to her own devices. Her years of service had at least earned her that much, hadn’t they?

Sasha rested her head against her knees. She didn’t feel pushed here with James beside her, and a house full of sleeping family around her. She felt calm, calmer then she had felt in a very long time.