“But, I love you…” Ferro replied meekly at their soon to be ex-boyfriend, Sterling.
“Well you should have thought of that before, Ferro! You always say that, yet you don’t care about me enough to even think about how I feel!” Sterling said as he pushed a suitcase into Ferro’s hands.
“I do care about you, I think about you all-” Ferro wasn’t able to finish the sentence before another round of yelling commenced.
“Then what the fuck is wrong with you, Ferro? I’m tired of your excuses. I thought an Anomaly like you would know what it’s like to be used. But it turns out you're just as much of an asshole as any other person I’ve dated!” Sterling unloads his rage onto Ferro, who, unable to hold back tears any longer, breaks into full snotty sobs.
“I’m so sorry, please Sterling, you're the only thing I have in the world...” Ferro manages to beg between their sobs.
“No Ferro! You don’t get to play the victim this time. You’re the one who cheated!” Sterling pushes Ferro out of what was once their home. “Go away, I don’t ever want to see you again!”
It wasn’t very far from the place they once called home. That the soot coloured rat-like Verling collapsed onto the hard ground. Ferro’s life had just shattered so singularly and so completely they didn’t think there were any pieces left to pick up. They just lay there for a while. Residents of the small village they had run off to, shot them glances as they passed. No one came to help.
News travels fast in a place this small. They remembered when the village first learned they were an Anomaly. It gained them so many strange looks from their neighbours. And now, with the news of their infidelity in the air, everyone gave them a wide berth.
“I guess I’ll have to go back to my parents…” Ferro thought as they finally picked themselves off the ground. Part of them wanted to just stay on the ground as it hit them. They ran away trying to find a life for themselves. And instead they’d just arrive back at their parents after completely failing at their poorly planned excuse for a life.
But it seemed they only had two options; that, or throw themselves into the sea. And they still needed to get up to fulfill the latter.
Ferro walked north down a lonely coastline road back to the town they were born in. They knew that they wouldn’t be able to get all the way back in one night. But luckily their aunt ran an Inn called “Driftwood” on the road in between. They stopped at it back when them and Sterling were running away from home. Ferro’s aunt Tawny, was the only family member who even knew where they went. When she met Sterling, she told them that they were the cutest couple she’d ever seen.
Ferro was sobbing again. It was funny how pleasant memories were always the most painful. Ferro replayed the argument in their head. They were already crying, so it was impossible to keep those thoughts at bay.
“I thought an Anomaly like you would know what it’s like to be used,” That word. Anomaly. The thing they are, haunted them like a spectre. It was all they ever were to people. At least Sterling thought it meant something positive.
Ferro’s mind was tired and done with thinking, but they still had a couple hours of walking left to go, so they looked out towards the sea. On the other end of the sea was Escada, a place with wizards, and paladin, and adventurers, and a life so foreign to them. They were born here in The Iron Tide, and they’d likely die here too. Waves roll in and out, sea foam frothing and crashing as an eternal rhythm is kept. The water itself was so chaotic, yet the sea was so vast it didn’t matter. Taken as a whole, the sea would always seem calm.
It was funny, in a sad sort of way. Whenever you remember heartbreak, you remember it being all consuming, but even in the center of all that hurt. You still think idle thoughts. Even the strongest emotions can become so familiar that they become placid. And when their emotions die down, Ferro feels something they’ve never been able to put into words.
Ferro is walking down an empty road, and to their side an endless sea separates them from the other shore.
