After the battle, he was lucky make it into the medical tent, let alone get a bed.

He guessed that’s what happens when you lose three limbs in one day; you get special treatment.

With two legs and an arm gone, he wondered whether he would ever walk again.

Nurses and Medics raced between the beds, doing the best they could, but I know a lot of people died that day.

I was one of the lucky ones out in that field, being tended to under the big gray dome of the sky, knowing eventually I’d get to go home.… Read the rest

I stormed his castle, crossed the moat onto the muddy ground, pressing myself against the outer wall and shimmying sideways until I found an opening.

I raced up stairs, fighting off swordsmen, and people throwing rocks. But I dodged and ducked and moved higher until I found his room, where he hid from me – with her.

“How dare you barge in here?” he roared.

“How dare you betray me?”

He draws a sword and we spar, metal clanking and breaths huffing, much like they used to between us.

“You deserve this,” I say, and plunged my hilt to his … Read the rest

“This is all I can give you,” he said, and it wasn’t enough for her.

She knew before he even said it that those words were lingering in the air between them.

The distance, the caution, the unwillingness to open up and really share a life.

Not to mention being the dirty little secret after years of not being a secret.

But as much as it hurts, it doesn’t touch the fear of being alone, and the dread of having no one to come home to, no one to hold her in their arms.

It never should have been him.… Read the rest

There was that time we were together and not together, when we shared space but not a life.

I can’t forget how much it hurt the days I couldn’t touch you, and how sad it was to even smile at you, because I was crying inside.

We’re never going to be friends now, you and I. If this ends, it ends.

I can’t live in a world where you’re right there and I’m over here and you won’t reach out and touch me.

Eternally platonic, I would have broken to pieces, doing everything I could to feel your love again.… Read the rest

She hated it when he wasn’t there for her.

She loved it when she could be enveloped in her lovers arms, when she could be pressed against him chest to chest, when she could rest her head on his shoulder, when she knew his arms would be there to roll into when she woke up.

The mornings when she wakes up alone, she wakes up weeping.

She knows these cuddles won’t be for long, and she might hot have them very long, either.

But when she gets them, his embraces are like water: she thinks she will die without them.… Read the rest