Page 95 of Escape from the Green

"Venia."

"Venia," I repeated, rolling the sounds around on my tongue. "I'm Amy. Amethyst."

"Not skill-less like me then."

"Actually, any skill I might have has been stunted for some reason."

"Well, that's all for the best. You don't want him draining you on top of everything else. Don't know exactly what that feels like, but you can hear the screaming from over in the prisons when they do it."

Lovely.

My stomach turned itself over, making me wonder if the contents of my stomach might come up after all before I was able to carefully breathe the urge away.

"How do you keep yourself from going crazy down here?" I asked, looking down at my ankle, feeling the burn that got no better with the passing of time or the stillness of my leg.

"Who says I'm not crazy?"

That was a fair point I hadn't considered. Was she crazy? Was she actually Cass' birth mother, or just some old woman with cobwebs up in her head.

"Crazy people don't stop to consider whether they are crazy or not," I decided, shrugging.

"Well, you're right there at least. I wish I had an easy answer for you, deary. I honestly don't know why I haven't lost my mind yet. After all this time. I guess I find the precious few good moments in my life, and focus on those. Let myself drift into them, see the sights, smell the smells, feel what I felt, let my mind think I am actually there instead of here. that helps. You got any good memories?"

Had she asked me simply a few months before, the answer would have been very different. "Yes."

I did.

I had Drake.

Aya.

Nesta.

Rayna.

Even Kieran and Tsar.

I had safety and usefulness and appreciation and, more than anything else, love.

Love for my new clan, for their acceptance of me, their willingness to show me their ways. Love for Aya and Nesta and Rayna who had become the mother and sisterly bond I had never been allowed to have before.

And, most of all, the love for Drake.

Just precious hours before, we had admitted it to each other for the first time. After weeks of feeling it, showing it.

Just hours.

It felt like days, like weeks.

I could see how easily time got lost here.

And as I drifted off to sleep, hoping the rest might dull the ache still in my temples, I wondered if maybe that was for the best, not being aware of each moment passing me by.

Maybe it was less painful that way.

"Girlie, wake up already!" Venia's voice croaked as something slammed into the side of my head, dragging me out of a dream I wished was reality, Drake and I planting mint and chamomile, rosemary and thyme in the beds out front of our house, happy, useful, in love.

But that wasn't the reality.