It's Still Life

24 – Briarthrest: The restlessness that follows after healing

Of All the Goodbyes

Brigid stands in the doorway of a house she once called hers.

Behind her: packed books, a pair of curtains that never quite fit the windows, two chipped mugs (left not in carelessness, but filled with gratitude and the faint spice of shared mornings).

Felreil waits at the edge of the drive, still as dusk, watching the way her shadow follows her; it stays close, like it’s been hers longer than she knows.

She turns once, not to see, but to feel, and something in her chest shifts, not pain, but the soft pressure of having once belonged.

The wind doesn’t blow, yet the tall grass moves anyway, offering no omen, only permission to leave, and when she walks away, the gravel keeps no record of her step.

Briarthrest curls in the footprints anyway; the 24th colour: all the goodbyes that don’t shatter when you say them.

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