Found:
Anger recedes inch by inch, the ebbing of the tide. Still something seethes beneath the surface, an undercurrent that threatens to pull me right back down into the boiling depths, the sinister promise of flesh scalded from bone before all that is left of me is dashed against the merciless rocks of my own stubborn nature.
My resistance is aided by the calming effect of the ruins and bolstered still by the weightless contact of the mist. I didn't go in. Not as such. I stood upon the very edge, my fingers trailing through the translucent wall, its tendrils brushing my cheek.
Come, it seemed to whisper. Come closer. Come home.
How I longed to do so! How I wished to envelop myself in this earth-bound cloud! How I wished to find my comfort, my serenity, my inner-peace within the embrace so tender that it can barely be felt at all. How easy it would have been to give in to that call...
Easy, but foolish and selfish.
'Tis not easy to live ones life for the sake of others when one has known naught but personal solitude for ones entire life. 'Tis not easy to turn ones back on what one has so long known and loved through naught more than a battered body that simply won't heal as once it did. The two reasons entwine, knotting together as one until I know not where the first ends and the second begins.
I know that if I walk into those fields, my chances of survival are now drastically reduced. This knowledge would not faze me were it not for those I would leave behind, the promises that would then be broken. I can't do it. Not to them.
So I breathe in the vapour as a lover would the last sigh of her soulmate. I lower my gaze, regret flowing through me as blood through veins. I turn away. I say goodbye. I return to the town of ruin and despair and my prison there of stone and thatch. My steps are heavy and slow. My heart, however, feels lighter now.
I am ready to talk.
