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“I’m not sure if it’s the place or the people,” she muses. “Maybe just the people, or maybe both.” She pauses, but I can tell that there is more on her mind. I give her all the silence she wants, then she herself continues, without being asked to. “I think I never quite belonged there, so I don’t really miss it. It is a feeling that lingers, isn’t it? Like a shadow you can’t shake off.”
I nod, realizing that her voice has turned sad.
“I’ve felt like that sometimes,” I admit.
“You have?” she sounds surprised. “Here?”
“Mhm,” I nod. “Even here. I mean, I love this place, these people, but sometimes… I feel like I’m somehow different from them.”
“Different how?” she wonders.
“Well, I wasn’t born into this clan,” I explain, opening up without planning to.
“Then how did you end up here?” she asks, more and more curious about my story.
“I was found as a baby,” I explain, then I chuckle. “You know, every time I say it, it never gets any less weird.”
“Well, no offense, but it is weird,” she smiles. “Babies aren’t usually found just lying around.”
I laugh at her words. “True. Rock’s parents found me and brought me here to the village. They first thought I was a human, and they wanted to take me to Pinehaven, thinking I came from there. But that very same night they found me, I turned for the first time, and they knew they couldn’t take me anywhere.”
She listens in disbelief. “So, you don’t know where you come from?”
“No,” I confirm.
“Did you ever wonder?”
“All the time,” I nod. “But honestly, I doubt it would change anything. This is my home. This is where I belong. Just… maybe it would make me feel somehow better if I knew, you know?”
“I know,” she smiles. Then, she looks down at my bare lower arm, at the long scar on the inside of it. “And that?”
“Oh, this?” I wonder, showing it to her. “I don’t know. I’ve always had it.”
“Looks like a scar,” she says tenderly, reaching to touch it with the tips of her fingers. “You don’t remember where you got it from?”
“No,” I shake my head. “I remember being told that I had it when I appeared here at the village.”
“Hm, that’s strange,” she muses.
“I know,” I grin. “But that’s what makes me unique, I guess.”
“You didn’t need anything visible to be unique,” she corrects me. “The moment you open your mouth it’s obvious how special you are.” She says that in a playful manner, so we both chuckle loudly.
“What about you?” I ask.
“What about me?” she echoes.
“Did you find what you were looking for?”
She thinks about it for a moment. “That’s a tricky question to reply to. We always think we’re looking for a place. But, as I’m growing older, I think it’s not a place at all, but rather the people. You look for people who make you feel seen, even in the darkest corners of your past.”
I absorb her words, the weight on my own shoulders somehow lightening. “Maybe it’s not a bad thing to feel lost sometimes.”
“You think so?” she wonders.
“Mhm,” I nod. “Because you keep discovering pieces of yourself in others, and that is what makes you feel whole.”
Her eyes widen at my words. Her lips part, but she doesn’t say anything. Not immediately.
