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Alaunna had built a fortress around her heart. Xullara could no more penetrate it than they could turn back time. They knew that now. They had thought they mattered to her more than they did, and they wouldn’t be making that mistake again.
She hadn’t been cruel, in her leaving. It wasn’t the leaving that was the problem. Xullara, reared wild, could never blame anyone for leaving. They felt trapped in the city, even one as big as Baldur’s Gate. Anywhere they stayed too long would become a trap to them. So they understood leaving.
It was just that Alaunna had made it clear they would never see her again. That this had been an indulgence of youth. They had thought, bitter, that she was treating them a hell of a lot like a disgraced child of outcasts for someone who had said she’d never see them that way.
They felt lied too, but that wasn’t fair. Alaunna had never said she’d stay, and they’d known what her family were like. It was only that they’d come to rely on her. She had understood what they were getting at, when words failed them. She had taught them to read and write. They, outsider wherever they went, had felt at home with her.
So it hurt, knowing that she would never speak to them again. That she had a future outlined, and they had no part in it. That, to her, they were something to be easily discarded. Perhaps she was right. People didn’t stay in their life. It was their own fault, really, for they didn’t stay either. Since their youth, Xullara had learnt to leave with nary a word. To be in and out of lives, as their parents had been in theirs. So maybe Alaunna was right to leave them. Maybe it was their own fault.