@icexpackxjc
The second the door clicked shut behind him, something inside her finally gave way. Her fingers curled so tightly around the edge of the counter, her knuckles blanched and the marble began to crack beneath her sheer strength. Her breathing came in shallow and uneven bursts. Her chest trembled under the effort of restraint, but as much as she tried to fight it, she couldn't keep the anguish buried for any longer. Meena had always been known for her composure. She'd spent decades burying her emotions down, snuffing out any thread of vulnerability that dared to breach the surface until...
He was gone, and she couldn't bring herself to seal her feelings inside some box somewhere deep enough that she could almost pretend that they no longer existed. There were claw marks across the kitchen cabinets. The wallpaper had been peeled back, and the entire spice cabinet had been torn to shreds. Broken glass had been left scattered across the ground, and she was sure her wings alone had broken far more than she'd even known as they tore through her back and expanded to their full extent. Pain had detonated through her spine, ripping a scream from her throat, before she could swallow it down. Her bones had cracked. Tendons had snapped, before they'd rewoven themselves, and her fingernails had split and lengthened into blackened talons. She barely had any recognition as to what she'd done to the kitchen. It was as though she had given in to the blinding agony. The animalistic cries had been raw enough to shred her voice apart, and when she did come to once more, she had realized that she had scattered that ache outside of herself. Every feeling she'd spent months bottling up now existed around her in a tangible and visible form. From claw marks to the splintered wood, she'd let herself break and she kept letting herself break for days.
Meena had practically vanished from Lunar Cove. She hadn't gone to work. She hadn't bothered calling in sick, nor had she shown her face at the Country Club. The woman who had spent the past hundred years prioritizing her duties above all of us had disappeared off the grid and destroyed part of her house in the process. She let herself be the monster she had become, flying as high into the sky as her wings would take her, only to fall out of the sky, diving toward the ground fast until her wings would catch herself at the last minute. She existed high above and outside of the Cove for days until the text came through and her taloned fingers nearly broke her phone.
She knew he'd rather have the conversation over a phone call or continued through text rather than dare risk being in her presence for her own 'safety', but after the last time they spoke, there wasn't a fragment of her being who wasn't about to have this conversation face to face, even if he'd prefer it if they could've had it anywhere but. He was lucky, though, that it took her quite some time to find him out in the woods. Long enough for her to tire herself out searching. Her feelings waned as her wings recoiled themselves back into her back. Staggering forwards, she finally found him standing there around the tree bend and, leaning against the nearby oak, she finally brought herself to ask, "So, this is your new home?" Her voice was all but a whispered breath, not bothering to hide the hurt in her eyes. "And you're staying here for the foreseeable future?"
There were a million other questions she wanted to ask. Had he slept out in the cold? Was he okay? Had his chest hurt the past few days as badly as hers had? Was he still resolved to stay out here, wanting to keep as much physical distance between them as humanly possible, and if so, where did that leave them? Were they over? She was fairly certain she knew the answer already. But, she needed to know for certain, if there was any point in continuing to try to fight fate or if they should just except that no matter what they do, they both were going to wind up heartbroken regardless.
"This isn't a home. This is nowhere." He could not say he had been expecting her to appear, but his heightened senses had at least caught the telltale approach of feet. He lived now eternally on-edge, hyper-aware of each sound, of each smell, of each sensation. He lived on the edge itself, jutting branches and wilting grass giving way to impenetrable fog, lost to woods that may or may not have waited beyond. Another mist clung to his mind, a barrier of his own making, useless and crude, a psychic embankment that left him cold, numb, and dull. It had not helped.
JC's half-dressed body ached, fractured, bones broken again and again and again, each time he gave into something like anger or worry or frustration or fear. Jagged claw marks tore their way down the trunk of a tree, splintered open as if by lightning. The ground was torn in half by teeth. Nearby lay the remnants of a fire he had not tried to light in several days.
"I don't have many more answers right now than I did when we last spoke. I'm sorry. I tried to text you," JC said softly, stepping out into the open, gait lumbering. A hand came up to point.
"The trees are broken all down that way. I don't know how far I went the other night. But there were white flowers. Mountain Ash? Maybe not. Maybe just looked it. Enough to turn me around, I think. I'm not really completely aware during it," he explained, shrugging his shoulders.
He cleared his throat. "And you? How are you feeling? I'm...trying to work through this. So I can come back better. But...the longer it goes on, the angrier I get. It's all a circle."
