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We’re in a strange dance, Rann and I, and not a graceful one.

Since we left the tunnels, my eyes have sought him out more and more often, pulled toward him every time I remember the way he held me in the caverns, shielding me with his body from the cutting stone.

The way he kept my bleeding hands wrapped around Lorcan’s bones, though how he knew to do so, I’ll never understand.

Lorcan told me that Rannoch cried the first time he took the blade from his belt and cut my palm to press into my necklace while Tahrik slept in the swallowing darkness.

How he murmured broken apologies over and over to my unconscious form, stumbling over the words but forcing himself to paint Lorcan when I was unable to.

I can’t imagine the stoic man’s eyes spilling tears, but my Protector would never lie.

Since then, though, he has been cautious; not unfriendly, not exactly, but just — waiting.

And I don’t know what he is waiting for.

He and Kaden are forming a friendship of sorts, their constant nagging and badgering of each other my daily entertainment, like watching an old married couple.

At times I walk with them, exchanging stories or trying, mostly unsuccessfully, to learn Kaden’s language.

It’s surprisingly easy to forget the world behind me during those brief moments; we never look backward, they never ask about bones, or souls, or talk about my place in the village.

It’s more lighthearted distraction; once Rannoch realized I hadn’t heard most of the village fables, he made it his mission to tell me all of them under the guise of sharing the stories with Kaden.

But I’ve noticed that the ones I nod along with always end quickly and in a rush.

The ones I am quiet for, leaning in to hear the details — those he draws out and elaborates, and I lose myself in them the same way I used to lose myself in the bones.

Rannoch is a surprisingly good storyteller; I wouldn't have thought it based on how somber he normally is, but he puts his whole body and voice into them, puffing his chest or changing his tone for different characters. Even Tahrik listens from steps behind us, where he usually walks beside the horse. I can’t spend too long with Kaden and Rannoch though; Tahrik grows jittery and nervous when he’s alone, left with his thoughts by himself.

He won’t join the others, always leaving space, and though he never reprimands me for walking ahead, he never relaxes until I am back beside him.

There’s a distance between us — between me, Kaden and Rannoch, between Kaden, Rannoch, and Tahrik, and now, even between Tahrik and myself.

None of the pieces fit together quite right, but maybe that’s because there are so many variations to each.

All the angles and curves that were so well known in our home are different in this new light, and it’s almost hopeless trying to put the two versions together into a single body.

They shimmer over each other, a mirage of water in a dry field, impossible to tell which is real and which is a figment of the imagination.

Am I still the girl who was gifted secret love songs played in ivory gardens?

Or one who ate smuggled fruit in the shadow of a bone wall, where a man promised to lick its juice from my skin?

Am I the child nestled in the curve of comforting ribs, protected by nothing but death and dreams, living in the space between waking and sleeping?

Or the flash of a woman I’d never seen, completely bare of bone, spine naked in dancing firelight, learning a foreign tongue?

I’m not sure all of these fit inside me together, am suddenly petrified that if I try, they will burst from me, tearing me to pieces, leaving nothing behind. The thought sends a sharp shiver down my spine, enough so Lorcan sways on my back, where Rannoch hovers.

“That was kind of you, but…” he says quietly, and I don’t turn to face him.

He pauses, and sighs, lowering his voice, a strange sort of hesitancy skirting his words.

“Wren…you do him no favors by pretending to be something you are not.” His words are an echo of Lorcan’s.

Mirror, mirror. I want to be angry, but the reluctance in his tone is clear.

Still, it is too much for me, uneasiness rushing through me in sickening waves. “You don’t know me.” The words are a snapping wolf, all fear, no bite, and the sorrow in his response is unexpected.

“I don’t. And I’m sorry for it. But…” I don’t want to hear what follows the break in his voice, have to resist the urge to cover my ears like a child. “But…” he repeats, then, so soft it is a gift, an offering, an invitation, “I am willing to learn. I am wanting to learn. Is he?”

“He does not need to learn. He knows me as I am.” The protest in my voice is too frantic, too desperate, and does not taste of honesty. And suddenly, irrevocably, I know.

Because, if I am being honest…

He knew me as I was .

As I used to be.

And the truth is, that skin was stripped from my bones like an Offering during a Rendering the moment I left the last bone arch of our village.

I am all raw muscle, exposed tendon, glistening fat and shining bone now.

There is no bone protection for me anymore, no structured days, no ivory armor.

I am not as I was, but don’t have a path to what I will become.

All at once, everything is untethered; I don’t recognize myself as I am, but am desperate not to return to the memory of the girl I left behind.

Panic wraps around my heart in an icy, skeletal hand.

The sallow light of day dims, and tiny fireflies spark then fade in the corner of my vision.

“Breathe, Wren. Breathe!” Rannoch’s voice is firm but worried, his hand rubbing hot circles on my back. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. He knows you as you are. You’re correct. I…I overthink things. I’m sorry. ”

And he is. But not for his honesty. More for causing me sorrow. And my skin does not reknit.