When the mission was over and everyone was safe, Annalee withdrew herself from the people around her. There was a darkness coming and she needed to figure out where her place was in all of the madness. When she was a scared child, she would run away to a shadow she discovered one day. It was just this long, open field cover by a sky of blue. There were never any people, or animals around; just the wide open beauty of nature. It had been some time since she ran away to this shadow, but she felt like that small scared child once again.
So unsure of her place in all of shadow, Annalee retreated to her sanctuary. She stood in the open field; eyes closed, and listened to the music of the wind. The point was to push out the noise of her mind and to find a meditative silence. So much has changed and she was beginning to allow herself to become lost in all of existence. She had no home, no family, and no plan. She was coasting along with just her will to fix things, and improvisation.
She was pretending she knew what she we doing, when in reality she was just as naïve as the rest. All of her decisions were off of instinct. She didn’t use fact, or logic. She just moved off of her gut feeling. But who was she to decide who was right or wrong? Who says her gut has any idea of what was going on?
Everything she has done has only hurt things. First she helped her mother. That led to war in Amber and then the obliteration of most life in the shadow. It also marked her as both a liar and an enemy to the family. She then tried to make amends by revealing the truth and then giving her hand in assistance with freeing Virgil. That caused her to betray her own family and be declared an enemy of her own home.
So now, she is sitting out in shadow, alone. She is just listening to the music of silence and trying to find the question that will lead her to the answer she needed to know. Should she help Amber? Why should she? Half of them hate her, and the rest allow her to stick around to ‘help out’. Can she take by her betrayal and return home? No, it is too late to turn back from that. Then what is her purpose?
Amber has Virgil, and he of course knows so much more than her. Her brow furrows as she thinks about him. He is has obviously moved beyond her own understanding and she should be one of his companion’s to help with his ‘great plan’. No, she couldn’t do that. Just because she is not an Amberite, she still was a being of power. She deserved to be treated with an equal respect. She should not be talked to as if a child.
Then she thought about her brother. At first when she heard her brother’s voice over the intercom she wanted to say something to him. She wanted to tell him about how he is misguided by their mother and this plan he has lived for is wrong. That it was all a lie. But nothing came out. She couldn’t bring herself to go up against him. It was hard enough to listen to her mother’s disapproval. She realized that she couldn’t handle it from her big brother.
And so she cowardly stood by the Amberite’s side and just did what she could to help before just retreating.
She ran away like she did as a child. How pathetic was that? Annalee opened up her eyes and looked out into the nothing around her. It was hard for her to hold back the tears and soon she fell to her knees sobbing. This purgatory she has doomed herself to be floating in was swallowing her up and has become too overwhelming.
Yes, there have been others who have offered their help, but why should she trust them? Why would they want to help her? Why would she deserve their charity?
But why is she fighting it? She has spent far too long keeping herself away from being roped in with the others. Annalee just keeps considering herself as this separate party. But in the grand scheme of things, she is in the same group as everyone else. She stopped crying and stood up straight.
It was time for her to pull herself together and to start making more of a mark on the universe. No more lingering. She was going to just go with the flow of things and just keep pushing till the end. She wiped away her tears and decided to say goodbye to this shadow. She was not a child anymore. She could not just run away from her problems. It was time to return to Virgil and Schala, and she would make herself be important to the plan, no matter what it was.
She would not be a coward.
-Annalee <3
