Work Text:
She sat. It had been god knows how long since she had the oppurtunity to just do that. Sit. It was always, “Azelma, sit next to those people and tell me what it is they’re saying,” or “Azelma, sit over there and distract anyone that gets too close.” Never just sitting, looking, thinking.
She sat on the ground, feeling the wood beneath her move with the waves. She looked up, seeing the night sky filled with stars. She thought.
She felt sick.
It wasn’t because of the sea, she’d gotten over that quickly. It wasn’t feeling small beneath the sky, she’d felt too small all her life.
It was the thinking.
The thinking about her brother and sister and all those other people, many of them not much older than Azelma herself. Bold children who looked at these stars once and never would again. She had sat there the next morning with her borther, with her sister, looking at the patterns of blood left on the ground and thinking that they mirrored the night skies in a way. That was the last time she got to sit and think.
She got up. The sky and the ground would both still be there whether she thought about them or not.