The Homecoming
I know she is a stranger to them. I know that, but they weren't there for everything that happened. In their eyes I left home without warning and returned months later, quiet and different and so in love I can almost feel myself coming apart at the seams. I need her now. After everything we've been through together I can't sleep through the night without her body next to mine, both of us knowing that if needs be we will protect each other like wildcats. We learned to do that because we had to for so long. I trust her with my life, and she trusts me with hers.
Only they don't know her the way I do, so they don't think she does. They say that because she's a sorcerer I can't trust that she hasn't spelled me somehow. Deep down I do know how powerful she is and that she could indeed cast a love spell so powerful that it could come with its own false history to convince me beyond hesitation... yet I hesitate now. She is the reason I am still alive. Isn't she? There is a hunger in her kisses as though she seeks absolution from the death she trailed behind her until her curse was broken. There is a restlessness in her steps and she is always pacing, pacing, an animal caged but still wild. I love her wildness, I...
I remember when we were in the north, standing under the Aurora Magicalus, and I took her hand and promised that we would live. Now we have. I wish I could tell them what that means, how much I found within myself in the time I was gone. They think she's the only stranger who came back.
I'm a stranger too.