Inner grounds
552 Words
We stood there a moment after Saera disappeared down the path.
The space she left behind felt settled, like something had been acknowledged and tucked gently into place. I hadn’t realized how much I needed that—someone who knew me before all of this, seeing me now and not flinching.
Silas shifted his weight. Not away. Just enough to catch my attention.
“She trusts you,” he said.
I glanced at him. “She always has.”
He nodded once. “That kind of loyalty doesn’t come from fear.”
“No,” I agreed. “It comes from staying.”
Something warm moved through the bond at that. Not sharp. Not demanding. Just… present. Like a low note held steady beneath everything else.
We started walking again, unhurried.
The pack moved around us like water around stone. Not parted. Not blocked. Just flowing differently. I caught fragments of conversation, felt glances that slid away before becoming stares.
I didn’t shrink from them.
I also didn’t rise to meet them.
That felt important.
Silas noticed when my breathing evened out. When my shoulders dropped. When the tension I carried like armor loosened enough to set down.
“You’re calmer,” he said quietly.
“I am,” I replied. Then, honest because there was no reason not to be, “You make it easier to be.”
He stopped walking.
Not abruptly. Just enough that I had to stop too.
He didn’t turn fully toward me. Didn’t trap the moment. He looked out toward the treeline instead, like he was choosing his words carefully.
“I don’t want to be something you lean on because everything else is unstable,” he said. “I want to be something you choose even when you’re steady.”
The bond responded before I could. A slow, deep hum—nothing like the violent pull from before. This felt… aligned. Anchored.
“I am choosing,” I said. “Right now.”
He looked at me then.
Really looked.
No hunger in his eyes. No fear. Just intent. Presence.
His fingers brushed mine as we resumed walking. A question, not a statement.
I let my hand turn slightly, our knuckles touching.
That was all.
Star stirred, gentle for once.
This is how it should feel, she said. Not louder. Just truer.
I swallowed, emotion rising unexpectedly sharp in my throat. “Does it ever scare you?” I asked. “How quiet it gets?”
Silas’s thumb traced once along my knuckle. Stopped.
“Yes,” he said. “Because quiet means I can hear what I want.”
“And what’s that?”
He didn’t answer right away.
When he did, his voice was steady.
“You.”
We reached the edge of the inner grounds then, where the forest began to thicken and the noise of the pack faded into something distant and manageable.
I hadn’t meant to come this far.
I didn’t regret it.
I slowed. He matched me.
Not guarding.
Not leading.
Just staying in step.
And for the first time since the sky started pulling at my name, I understood something with absolute clarity:
Whatever was waking inside me didn’t push people away.
It was making space.
And Silas quiet, choosing, present—was standing in it with me.
- Writer
