(no subject)
Leaving Tristran behind with a kiss to keep and the key to return (stating plainly, and with no little amusement, that this particular negotiation he could certainly handle on his own) the star steps her way out of the inn and into the dimming light and murmured music of the marketplace. She pauses outside of a nearby tent, fingers curling around the opening flap and eyes blinking against the honeyed light before they slip closed, thrumming vaguely with the song.
It is then that a voice reaches her, aged and unfamiliar, requesting conversation, and she turns to face an old woman - bent, white-haired, and blind in one eye. She's extraordinarily tiny - hunched over a walking stick as tall and hopelessly curled as the woman herself - and when the star inquires as to the nature of the conversation, she stares up at her, "I came to fetch your heart back with me."
Ah. Well then.
"Is that so?" her lips twitch upward vaguely.
It's always a such a pleasure to be home.
"Aye," the woman replies. "I nearly had it, at that, up in that mountain pass." A dry cackle, low in the woman's throat, and the star looks again, carefully this time - eyes drawn to the large pack on the tiny woman's back and quickly to the long, spiraling ivory horn twining its way out of it. "D'ye remember?"
She remembers. She remembers far more than she cares to.
"That was you?" the star blinks, nearly incredulous - and just as nearly tempted to lean forward, to find some sort of proof. Some other sort of proof. The one she already notices makes the faint glow at the edges of her sputter, dim. "You - with the knives?"
"Mm. That was me. But I squandered away all the youth that I took for the journey. Every act of magic lost me a little of the youth I wore, and now I am older than I have ever been."
"If you touch me," she replies, oddly calm. "Lay but a finger on me, you will regret it forevermore."
"If you ever get to be my age," the old witch says, and the star holds back a quick reply. "You will know all there is to know about regrets, and you will know that one more, here or there, will make no difference in the long run."
Her dress, once fine and red as some rich wine, is patched and faded, as though the years she had lost were lost to the fabric as well, and when she tilts her head - quick and oddly crowlike - the material hangs down from one wrinkled shoulder, exposing lines and scars that may very well have been hundreds of years old. "So what I want to know is why it is that I can no longer find you, in my mind. You are still there, just, but you are there like a ghost, a will o' the wisp. Not long ago you burned - your heart burned - in my mind like silver fire. But after that night in the inn it became patchy and dim, and now it is not there at all."
A sudden grin, "Could it be that the heart you seek is no longer my own?"
The old woman coughs - her entire frame, the frail thin thing it is, shakes and spasms with the retching effort of it - some words, like mistakes and foolishness slipping past the wheezing sandpapery breaths.
"You should have let me take it back then, for my sisters and me," the woman manages after the star has waited patiently, fingers folded into her skirts. "Well before all of this. It is never the wise choice - we could have been young again, well into the next age of the world."
"And I was supposed to just give it to you then?" an imperious glance downward. "You with your knives?"
A snort, nose graceless and undisguised, "Like you gave it to that child?"
"It is my choice," she replies, chin set firmly. "And he is no child."
"Decided, have you? Just like that?"
"Just like that," she echoes, merely to be contrary. "It was not that difficult of a decision."
"He will break it," the woman warns in a voice creaky with age, with some knowledge that the star doesn't particularly fear. "Or waste it, or lose it. They all do."
"Perhaps," she allows. "But it is his to break. To do with whatever should suit him."
And it is true enough - simply stated as such - true enough that the star smiles in some strange satisfaction over the loss of such an important and guarded thing. She has never before (as far as she can recall - and she can recall some great lengths) had such cause for joy at being left without.
"I hope that your sisters will not be too hard on you," she adds, for she knows well the trials of family. Well enough, at the very least, that the words themselves are genuine. "If it helps you any, you may tell them that you tried rather valiantly - it is due to no incompetence on your part, but rather a helplessness on mine. Though it is no such thing that I regret."
"My sisters will be harsh, but cruel," the old witch queen replies and her bony fingers flex around the top of the stick, making the star think of spiders. "However, I appreciate the sentiment. You have a good heart, child. A pity it will not be mine."
"Perhaps," the star nods and leans down to press a kiss against the roughened skin of the woman's cheek before she turns once more to seek her heart, words easy and confident. "Time shall tell, I suppose."
She doesn't look back - and, more importantly, she doesn't regret her choice.
Time knows what answer she expects.