The first secret

tie a rope around your neck, and let me kick you off a bungee Her sudden change of heart, gentle, suddenly understanding while I still fumed, while the rage at her disrespect still clung to my skin, bubbled to the surface and I was still spitting, still steaming because I clung to the emotions that consumed me, refused to let them go until I was too tired of feeling one way, until they let me go and I was left to feel empty. But this fury, it clung, it wouldn't let go and even though the woman before me had easily shaken her attitude, mine remained. It only worsened at her question, asking for three things she does not know - my name was a simple enough response, One - "My name is Valdís." And the second came along with it, passing through my lips without hesitation. It was long, it was a winding path of my lineage that I thought could be spilled without worry because one half was dead, and the other may has well have been for he had been silent since our arrival. Perhaps it was grief that got the best of him, that buried him in the twisted trails within the foreign world, kept him hidden and quiet while he went through the stages of loss and mourning. "I am a child of Volterra, a man with too much spare time and too strong of a need for sex, leaving me with a handful of half siblings that do not care of me - and Amara, a woman who had been plagued by demons she could not run or hide from, the driving force that caused her death." These words are not bittersweet but foul as they leave my tongue, a hiss as I spit them out at her hooves, choking but unwavering as I recite the sentences like I'm reading from a book I've read a hundred times. I'm not going to get theatrical about it, I'm not going to pretend it doesn't hurt either, but I certainly won't let her see the pain as my heart clenches as I speak of Momma. I would never see this woman again, never hear about her and what more she can say, I drown out the sound of the world, of any word that leaves her lips as the final secret comes forward, one no one but I and Momma knew, but she was dead, and I was the only one left to bear it's weight. "My mother was the one who took my eyes, she was the one who grounded me, who blinded me -" And suddenly the world is nothing but a deafening roar, churning blood in my ears as I lower my head, turning to go but hesitating, waiting to be snagged back by the woman, too caught up in the conversation to go - I wait there, pausing between steps as I strain to hear a response from her.

@Erthë