Chapter 2
Letting go was impossible.
It wasn't that she wasn't trying. She was, she truly was, but Druig had had a grip on her for far too long for it to be severed, even by a night like that in Tenochtitlan.
Makkari went to find him, sometimes, to poke the wound he'd left in her— the wound she'd made when she'd chosen not to follow him. He appeared to be doing well: caring for his people, establishing a thriving village deep in the Amazon, away from any who would ruin their peace. He seemed happy, even-keeled and cheerful, the few times she had seen him from afar.
For of course she never ventured too close. It wouldn't do to be caught there. Druig had asked her to let him go, and she was determined to follow his wishes this time.
But Makkari still missed him, raggedly, desperately.
Her dreams were filled with vague uneasiness, the always-present sense that the world was just wrong somehow, and if she stopped thinking about where she was running she would always find herself coming back to him.
Druig. Her northern star, her guiding light. The one person who would always feel like home.
The one person she didn't deserve, not now, not anymore. Maybe not ever. She had pushed him to a place he should have never had to go, all for the sake of her own comfort, her own selfishness, and now she had no more claim on him than she had on the sun.
Sometimes she wanted him to catch her, to take her by surprise when she drifted through his town like the night wind, to snatch her out of the air and pull her to him. But she was Makkari, goddess of speed, and nothing could take her by surprise. She could tell where he was by nothing more than the feeling of his footsteps, the vibrations of his lungs, his heartbeat, and she was never so much of a masochist as to let him find her.
She wouldn’t betray him a second time, forcing her way back into his life. He had left her, and she had let him, and now his life was his own.
Makkari felt like a rubber band, stretched to the breaking point by each second she spent without him, and she wondered if this is what it had been like for him in those last days together. Pulled apart, fibers of his being breaking one by one as she refused to give any ground, until the whole thing came crashing down. She mourned for what she had done to him, what she had caused in her blindness and her fear.
Taking a breath, deep as the oceans, she ran just to the edge of the jungle. Lights glowed in his compound, footsteps bustling along the paths, the susurration of many voices providing a familiar undertone. Somewhere, a peal of laughter reverberated against the tree trunks.
And— there.
Druig’s footsteps, steady and measured as always, coming out of the large building on the far side of the town. He was with others, four or five of them, who were speaking to him. At this distance there was no way she could tell what they were saying, but the unique vibrations of his voice when he spoke drove deep into her heart, pinning her in place.
It felt like her feet became rooted to the ground, joining the trees, immortal and immobile. Yearning surged high in her throat, and she fought for control, fought to not give in to the need to race to his side. She remained motionless as he came closer and closer, still amongst his people, until the risk grew too high that she might be discovered.
And then, just as she was about to speed away, on a path distant in her vision a new light appeared. A small group came into view, and then… she caught sight of him, just for an instant before she was gone.
It was the first time she’d seen his face in so long, the lines and dimples having been blotted out in her memory by the sight of his back, silhouetted in flames, walking away from her.
She thought of it often, that night under the burning stars, the great tragedy of her life. Would that she could go back, have a second chance at it, a chance to choose differently. For in the five hundred years since then, she had come to realize that, much as she loved the rest of her family, only Druig was irreplaceable.
There had been so many things he had taken with him when he left, things she hadn't thought about enough to realize they belonged to him. Inside jokes and trading glances, winks, rolling their eyes when Ikaris got too high and mighty or Kingo too insufferable. Days spent together, walking amongst the humans, playing games and trying new foods, making friends. Nights of long conversations, watching the stars wheeling overhead and leaning on each other in the darkness.
No one now could know what she was thinking, just from a glance at her face. No one could always tease a smile out of her, no matter how dark her mood. And no one could make her feel as loved as Druig did, when he tucked her hair behind her ear and softly pressed his lips to hers.
She had ruined it.
Makkari tried not to be melancholy, she really did. She distracted herself with anything and everything, following every flight of fancy in the desperate pursuit of filling the aching hole in her chest. Her possessions accumulated in the otherwise-empty Domo, a mountain of things that could never quite satisfy her.
She avoided her family, unable to bear even the thought of discussing Druig with anyone, preferring to keep company with short-lived humans who never looked deep enough to see any of her wounds. Days went by, bright and sunlit, a haze of manic activity. For if the world grew too still, too slow, the ache was waiting right there at her heels. All that remained for her was to outrun it, waiting until the day when (at last, at last) Arishem called them home.
Makkari never slowed enough for the darkness to fully take her. She wouldn't. She couldn't.
And so the centuries passed, little by little and all at once, until the long-awaited day came. Footsteps echoed in the halls of the Domo: her family, at last ready to return to Olympia.
She couldn't wait to put it all behind her and go home.