“Let me go!” I shouted and started wiggling away. I tried to wrestle him, I tried to kick him and stomped my feet, but his hold on me was too firm to easily escape from, his body pressed too tightly against me.
“I will not let you go until you tell me what is happening to you. Why are you acting like this?” Dahr threatened and, to emphasise, pushed himself even tighter into me, letting me know that there was no way I was escaping this unless he chose to let me go.
“Because,” I struggled again to no avail. “I want to get away from you!”
That seemed to stop him for a moment. His hold on me loosened just slightly, but not enough to allow me to escape. So, I continued, hoping that this was the key to my release. I let allmy thoughts flow. I let my fears invade me and let my mouth say everything I was thinking. Everything I was questioning and failing to understand. “You are a monster!” I jumped away from his arms again, only to remain as trapped as before. “You and all your camp! Violent, savage monsters!” I continued fighting, wiggling and stomping my feet, trying to make my body as heavy as I could by jumping up and down in an attempt to get away from the pressure his arm forged around me. “I don’t want to die here… I deserve better than this!” I finally said, admitting my biggest fear. “I deserve… a better death than this…”
I was so focused on admitting this very phrase to myself, that I didn’t realise that my feet were back on the fur-lined floors and the pressure around my waist had disappeared. I looked to my side to see Dahr taking a step back, his bare chest heaving and his features distraught.
“Is that what you wish for, March?” his voice barely came out and when it did, it sounded broken.
I fully turned to him then, letting myself feel all the overwhelming fears that were blanketing my senses. “I don’t want to die like this,” I finally said.
I looked at him then, fully looked at him, for what seemed like the very first time. Giving myself enough time to take in his features. To notice the melancholy he carried like a war-wound. To see that, whatever truth or lie had come out of my mouth, it had broken a piece of him I didn’t know how to mend.
“You are free to go,” he said, his eyes glinting with the misfortune of what could have been and deciding to snap the root of our connection. “No one will stop you. You have my word.”
The sadness that filled the room almost made me take my words back, terrified of the effects they had on him. Because he looked… broken. Like his very essence had vanished from his spirit.
“Dahr…” I said his name but stopped. What else was there to say? “Thank you,” I nodded quickly and hurried to grab my shoes, which I had luckily left by the entrance.
I put them on quickly and moved towards the exit flaps, part of me still in disbelief. Was he truly letting me go? Was he really a decent person that I had insulted in such a way until he lost his battle?
“Go, Nora,” his voice urged me to continue and, forcing myself to not look back, I fled the tent.
The light of day hit my skin with the strength of a thousand sharp knives, the sunny day pushing a blast over my body. I expected commotion in the camp, I expected chatter and protests, for people to look at me with hatred or to even swear at me after the events of the night before.
I had to contain my stomach from spilling itself at the sight of the two decapitated heads pushed onto wooden spikes, jammed into the ground at each side of the tent and moved over quickly to get away from the sight and the stench.
Taking my first steps with care and expecting to be stopped at any minute, I walked slowly through the lines of tents and looked at the people around me. Truly looked at them. The change from the day before was overwhelming and, for the first few times, I even had to look back when someone nodded to me or greeted me, because I thought their cordial remarks were meant to be received by somebody else.
But when a woman called me ‘March’, greeted me and offered me a glass of water, I knew something was amiss. It was as if I was suddenly alive and was somehow deserving of being acknowledged.
A few men even asked me if I was alright or needed anything, one of them offering me a cheese wrap from his own plate, when I passed by him having breakfast outside his tent.
They weren’t treating me like a prisoner any longer. It was as if I was becoming one of them and I knew it had to do with last night’s events. With the fact that Dahr had made a public display of punishing someone who hurt me.
‘Anyone who dares to touch my woman again will share the same fate.’ His voice sounded on repeat, my mind too focused on those two words to let the memory go. The two words I had done my best to ignore all night. The two words that raised demons inside my very being.
My woman.
My very soul fluttered with the possibility, with the change of fate that had brought me here. This unique experience meant only for me to live.
Was this worth abandoning my plans over?
Was it worth foregoing my final five years?
I had everything planned. I knew exactly how the rest of my life would be, what I would do, what I wanted to study and what I wanted to create. I had marked important dates in the calendar, I had made plans and ordered materials for a new creation every year.
Something to be remembered by.
Something to leave behind.
Love, however, was not part of the plan. My soul burning with desire for a man I barely knew was not discussed in my five-year farewell tour. I was going to die, that was a certainty. The question was, what would I do with my remaining time?
Was it worth letting it all go, just for a final chance at romance?
I let my feet take me through the camp as I visualised my two options, questioning and thinking, doing my best to envision my planned life and this new adventure I had a chance to get a snippet of.
