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"ᵗʰᵉ ˢᵗᵃʳᵏᵉˢᵗ ᴹᵃᵈⁿᵉˢˢ" - 𝓈𝓉𝑜𝓇𝓎 𝓈𝓃𝒶𝓅𝓈𝒽𝑜𝓉 𝒻𝑜𝓇 𝒹𝓇𝒶𝑔𝑜𝓃 𝒶𝑔𝑒 𝒶𝓊 [under construction]

The path was thick and overgrown, moss peeking from between the broken stones, the air smelling lush and green. Tyrel knew this path well, though it had been almost five years since he'd walked it, and even then it had been a tangled, well-hidden mess. That was, of course, how his parents had liked it. People in the village knew of their little family - they had to trade every now and again, but very few knew of just how to reach the cottage, the land surrounding it. Back then, the cottage and the fields and the forest and the river - they had been his entire world. He had once thought that he would have been able to make a map of the place; didn't he once attempt that, to try to do some kind of treasure hunt? He doesn't quite remember. From the entrance to the forest, to the outskirts of his childhood home, it was a good thirty to forty minutes walk, longer if you really wanted to stop and take in the ambiance; and from the light dappling through leaves in age-old trees just up ahead, he knew he was reaching the start of the valley.

1629735416558.png Tyrel paused, heart squeezing painfully in his chest as he caught his breath. He'd come back for a reason, and when he started his journey he'd been sure it was a good reason. But everything had been so different after... Mari died. He and Ciaran, his twin, only minutes older - though he acted like he was years his senior - had been only ten at the time. Maker, has it really been ten years since Mari died, he thought, feeling older than his nineteen years. His mother had stopped being anything like a mother, and his father, the anchor, had been stretched in all directions as he futilely tried to keep Aria and the twins together. Marielle had been the favourite; Tyrel knew it and hadn't really minded. She had been such a sweet, gentle thing, with no much patience for two older brothers who liked to pull her pigtails and hide her books. It had been easy to see, even as a child, that Ciaran must have resented Mari - his teasing was always much more persistent, even when Tyrel had long stopped and he could see the soft wobble of Mari's lower lip. Maybe if Tyrel had actually spoken up about that more, had looked out for Mari as he should have done, she wouldn't have ran off that day.

He hadn't realised his memories had caused his legs to go weak until he felt the rough scratch of bark against his palm, and he blinked as his senses returned. He was lightly leaning up against a tree, his pack hanging listlessly against the underbrush. For the last five years, he'd tried not to think about the one day, in particular, but it had been the one defining moment of his life, at least until he'd met the love of his life. He wouldn't be able to face his parents with his usual, though a little more mature, attempt at humour, if all he could see in his mind was the way his mother screamed and rocked back and forth and his father, unsheathing his sword, and Mari, but it wasn't Mari and - I'm doing it again.

No, better for him to come back to them with a clean mental state, ready to gush all about Eloise and how she was the girl he knew he was going to marry one day soon. Maybe after, before he headed back through the forest, he would stop down by the river, under the fallen willow tree, and tell Mari all about Eloise, too.
 
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