We are intrepid; we carry on.

Deirdre's insides felt as if they were falling out from the violent shaking of her own small body and the violent shaking of the great oak beneath her. She buried her vulnerable head inside her soft slightly mangled wing. It slowly turned warm like blood. Warm with salty exhausted tears. She would surely suffocate herself in the death sauna. Deirdre squeezed herself out of the enjambment, her small smokey eyes falling downward under the weight of the skies.

As if an angel alighting to catch Deirdre, Adelaide was climbing towards her. Deirdre wanted to scream, to fly, to weep until she could no longer sob. But she stayed taciturn, drinking in Addie with her transformed black eyes. How Adelaide had changed since last they met. She was, in fact, the creature of Deirdre's dreams: gashes from beatings cling to her olive skin, her ebony hair was matted - like the wolf's - like the lion's, her amber eyes were tumultuously storming - disrupted ocean stirring up sediment. But she was not growling, clawing at Deirdre for coming too close. She was not sullen, grudgingly slinking towards Deirdre as some sort of pre-conceived false reassurance. She was carefully gently maneuvering herself into, between, under, above the stoic branches.

Deirdre watched her with a critical eye. The resurrected apparition eventually reached a branch parallel to her, and lifted her aching eyes to Deirdre's downtrodden ones. Deirdre did the most uncanny ridiculous thing. Every muscle in her body urged her not to do it. Her body told her to fly, to quit. Deirdre pulled her legs over to Adelaide's domain, and tucked herself beneath Adelaide's arm. She curled herself to fit with Addie, trying to force her constant warmth into Adelaide's foreign coldness. Deirdre spoke words to her. Words of comfort and joy and forgot her previously swearing to remain silent. She opened her heart to Adelaide, comforting her with words of God and joy and peace and love. Being herself comforted the same.


Adelaide was falling apart. Falling apart in her arms; Deirdre could sense it. A relief washed over her icy fears and brought pale green grass to grown again on her heart.


"The seasons always change, and life will find a way."


I believe. What if I believe you now? Forgive me, believe me, please come back to my life.


A trickling stream of words began, rushing into a flood of apologies for wrongs and apologies for apologies. Deirdre cried, Adelaide spoke - two displays of securities that neither had expressed for months. Its about time. Any longer and the misunderstandings would be enough to scar.