Tears streamed down Morwyn's cheek as she stared with unfocused eyes into the moonlit forest. She ran a thumb across the back of the hands she was holding, hands she'd known and held intimately for several years. Hands that belonged to a woman she'd trusted until that moment.
"I don't understand," she said in a choked whisper. "I thought you loved me, Heather."
The other woman, a tall brunette, looked heartbroken and ashamed at the same time. She sniffed back her own tears and paused for a long moment to think. As the silence grew, the sounds of the forest seemed to fade into the background. Morwyn's heart thundered with panic and disbelief.
"Yes, Morwyn, I do love you... but something's wrong. I'm a woman grown now, and you... well... people are starting to talk-"
"But I'm three years older than you!" Morwyn interrupted, squeezing her lover's hands in earnest as her voice cracked. "They know this. You know this. I can't help how I was born. Even my parents don't know why it's happening."
Tears fell down Heather's face freely now as she wrestled with some internal conflict. She steadied herself with several deep breaths before responding.
"I know, Morwyn... But while I've grown up, you're still as you were when we were teens. I'm twenty seven and unmarried, and I don't think I can wait any longer for you to..."
"Grow up," Morwyn finished miserably, burying her face in Heather's shoulder. "By the gods, I'm thirty years old and everyone keeps telling me to grow up."
Heather trailed one hand down Morwyn's cheek, wiping away her tears only for more to take their place. She gave her a gentle squeeze before opening her arms and stepping away from Morwyn's desperate embrace, taking several deep breaths as she dashed away her own tears with the back of her hands. Morwyn could see Heather's body tremble as much as her own as she continued, unable to meet Morwyn's gaze any longer.
"It's not just that. Some of the townsfolk are starting to speak out more openly about you behind your family's back. They think that you're... cursed, or a witch, or a bad omen...” Heather ran a distressed hand through her hair as she stared at the ground or a long moment, wringing her hands. She suddenly looked back to Morwyn with fear evident in her eyes. “Superstitious fools, every one of them, but dangerous fools. I told them off when it was just a few, but they're growing in number by the day and the way they're starting talk about you... It might not be safe here for you much longer...”
Morwyn couldn't begin to imagine just what had been said to scare Heather away from her in such a way. She stood there numbly, unable to speak past the lump in her throat.
“I... I'm sorry, Morwyn... I will never forget what we shared, but... I have to go. I don't know what my father will do if he finds out I've snuck off to meet with you again. He's already warned me twice... Please forgive me... I couldn't bear it if-" Heather hesitated, biting her lip as if she wanted to say more. Instead she hesitantly placed her hands on either side of Morwyn's face and kissed her tenderly one last time, their tears salting their lips, before pulling herself away and vanishing into the fog without another word. In her absence the world was a colder place and so suddenly, so excruciatingly lonely.
Morwyn slumped against the trunk of a nearby tree in a daze bordering on panic, torn between the love and betrayal in the kiss that lingered on her lips like a ghost. She thought back to the last time that anything felt normal to her. The fall festival, ten years ago? No, by then she was already getting sideways glances from the gossipy housewives of Hearthvarn. She'd felt something off almost as long as she could remember. Every time the family had made the trip from their mountain cottages down to the town someone was watching her warily.
As her friends and family grew up around her, getting married and having children and complaining of aching joints, Morwyn always seemed to be in a perpetual state of youth. Some envied her. Some despised her. Others whispered dark rumors when they thought she couldn't hear them, but the ambivalent breeze always seemed to carry their cutting words to her one way or another.
The Pale Lady, they called her. As if she could do anything about that. She spent just as much time working under the sun as any of the others, yet her skin was always fair. She tried to be a good daughter, a good sister, a good friend... a good lover. But now, as the last vestige of Heather's perfume faded and the earthy scent of the damp forest took its place, Morwyn knew that none of it mattered. No matter how hard she tried to be the woman that was expected of her, no matter how much she strove to make a life for herself that she could be proud of... there would always be the lingering, unanswered question that hung over her like an executioner's axe.
“Who am I?”
The dark pines declined to answer her whispered question. For a long moment she leaned against one in order to keep from falling to her knees in despair. Her hands shook as she reached up to brush an errant strand of her hair behind one ear. Tears dripped from her nose to the toe of her boot, their impact the only sound in her world as her heart ached. It wasn't fair. None of it!
Morwyn threw herself away from the trunk of the tree with a sudden vigor and clenched her fists so hard that her nails dug into the flesh of her palms. Anger flared in the empty hole left by her fading anguish. How dare they treat her like this? Like some outsider, some monster? She was a child of Skeldrûn as much as any of them. She'd climbed the same mountains, sailed the same seas, braved the same bitter winters as any of them had... Yet none but her family could see her for who she was rather than what they imagined. None of the townsfolk saw past how different she looked from them, how differently she aged.
In a moment of blind anger, Morwyn drew a knife from her belt. She whirled on the tree behind her and stabbed downward, burying the blade into the thick timber. Her breath came in heaving gasps as she struggled to pull it free before plunging it in again and again and again. It was pointless savagery but it felt good to release the pent up anxiety and fear against something as implacable as the tree.
With each successive strike she felt her hand grow colder rather than hot with exertion, and when she has spent her rage against the ambivalent pine she opened her eyes to see a frigid haze spiraling from the blade in her blistered hand. The gashes she'd left on the tree are rimed with frost, the crystalline formations glittering a stark white against the rough bark.
Too numb with grief to be curious, Morwyn stepped back a few paces, leaving the blade lodged in the trunk as the ice slowly began to creep outward. She stared at it blankly for a time, letting her racing pulse slow as she breathed deeply. Just another curiosity to add to the list of unknowable things that made her a stranger in her homeland. Just another thing that made her a freak of nature.
Without knowing how long she stood there staring at her icy blade, Morwyn was startled from her catatonic state by the sound of approaching footsteps. Though muted by the damp needles on the floor of the pine forest they were a cacophony in her ears compared to the bitter silence that proceeded them. Morwyn turned to find their source and her knees nearly buckle as she saw Elaine.
Her youngest sister, five years her junior, now looked nearly ten years her senior. Though the reminder of the disparity was painful, the warmth of Elaine's embrace quickly dispelled the pain of her arrival. She gripped Morwyn fiercely, cradling her head to her chest.
“Oh, Morwyn. I'm so sorry...” Elaine whispered hoarsely. It was clear she had been crying as well. “I've been worried about you so I followed you when you snuck out... I heard everything.”
Morwyn didn't respond. She collapsed into her sister's arms and wept quietly, utterly spent.