Kiersten's Arc

Chapter 9 of 33

Kiersten woke in the stone house with the warm feather still in her palm. Witness sat under her ribs, patient. She tried to listen. All she heard was her own head. Why did he take so much. Why did she keep giving. Why did he leave her empty after she poured herself out. The questions crowded the quiet until Witness went thin as a held breath. She dressed and walked out to find better ground. She passed the battered house at the bend, the one with the sagging roof and boarded windows. It looked like the inside of her chest today. She did not stop. She kept walking until she reached the tarot lighthouse at the end of the lane, its sun-crown burning steady above the painted cards. Fortune had told her the monument held still air. She sat on the bottom step and pressed her back against the stone. The noise did not stop. It got louder. Why couldn't he be the man she needed. Why did he leverage her softness against her. She wanted him better. She wanted him present. She wanted the return she had been promised. The wanting looped and Witness could not push a word through. A pale butterfly landed on her wrist, one wing torn short. It stayed. Kiersten watched it breathe. She said the thing she had been circling. "I want to hear the rest of what he had to say. Then I want to be done." The loop cracked. Witness moved into the gap. His spirit came, not his body. She saw Eduardo standing in a field she had seen once before, cap off, hands open. This time he did not stop after one sentence. He spoke in long lengths. He said he had leveraged her because leverage was the only tool his father had shown him. He said he had taken because he did not believe anyone would give twice. He said her steadiness had scared him worse than her leaving. He said he was going to a place that could hold a man like him, and he did not know if he would come back the same, or come back at all. He said he had loved her badly and known it while he did it. Kiersten did not answer. Witness kept the channel open until he finished. When he stopped, the field thinned. The butterfly lifted from her wrist and was gone. She sat on the step of the tarot monument and felt the quiet arrive. Not empty. Cleared. The questions had answers now, and the answers were his to carry, not hers. Witness spoke plainly under her collarbone for the first time since the doors opened. Two words. Walk home. She stood. The gold line at her seventh ring pulsed once. She walked back past the broken house without slowing. The door of the stone house opened under her hand. She was ready to be taught.