Chapter 171 Old Soul, Small Body

Chapter 171 Old Soul, Small Body
Gilfred

I have been alive longer than most creatures suspect. Not in the loud way people count their years. I measure it in the way civilisations rise and then crumble back into dust. I have watched kings fall. I have watched forests grow where cities once stood. I have lived in the cracks of temples, behind hearthstones, and beneath the roots of trees older than memory. I have observed love in all its foolish forms, but none quite like hers. When I first found Bella, she was young. Young in the way frost is young, thin and bright and dangerous if you touch it wrong. I had been wandering, bored with the ordinary rhythm of a town that smelled like stale bread and smaller ambitions. People there walked in straight lines. They did not burn, freeze, or break. I do not care for lives that are already decided. I was preparing to leave when I saw the tower. It pierced the sky, too tall, too proud, too lonely. Curiosity has always been my greatest weakness. I slipped through a crack near the base where mortar had loosened and climbed. I found handholds no human eye would ever notice. I moved up and up until the air thinned and the wind sharpened, and at the top, I found her. A small girl alone.
She sat near the narrow window, her knees pulled in, fingers white from the cold she was trying to control. Snow spilled from her hands in small, frantic bursts, scattering across the floor. It was beautiful and wasteful all at once. I licked one of the flurries as it landed, and she looked at me. Most people look at my kind and see nothing but a creature that clings to walls and flicks its tongue. A decoration in motion. Bella tilted her head. “You’re not supposed to be here,” she said curiously. I held her gaze, and something passed between us. Recognition, perhaps. Not of form, but of loneliness. She was trapped in stone, and I was trapped in flesh that could not shape words. She spoke to me that day. She asked what I had seen, where I had come from. Whether I thought the sky looked closer from up there. No one had ever asked me questions before, so I stayed.
I watched her read. She devoured books like they were escape routes. She sang sometimes when she thought no one could hear. She cried rarely, and when she did, she hid it as if it were a failure. I curled near her shoulder often. I let her think she protected me from drafts. It amused me. She understood from the beginning that I was not mindless. She spoke to me like a comrade, like a witness, and I was. I watched the frost creep higher along her arms as she grew older. I watched fear settle into her bones when the world outside the tower continued on without her. I watched her decide, quietly, that she would not be small. When she left that tower, I went with her. It was not loyalty but choice. I have followed many lives across centuries, but rarely do I find one worth anchoring myself to. Bella burns and freezes in equal measure. She is storm and hearth and stubborn stone. She does not bend easily, and when she does, it is because she has chosen to.
I watched her meet him. Damien carried himself like a man who had never been allowed softness. He moved like a blade wrapped in duty. The first time his eyes landed on Bella, I saw the fracture. He was already lost to her heart and her beauty. I have seen kings take wives for land, for heirs, for strategy. I have seen queens smile while planning exits. What Bella and Damien built was slower, very awkward, but earned. He fed her, he watched her, and he learned her edges instead of sanding them down. While she challenged him, tested him, refused to shrink and showed him that softness is not weakness. I basked in their arguments. Heat and frost in equal measure—a balance I have rarely seen sustained. Through battles and politics and fire and ice, I remained.
People assume I am a pet. A decoration perched on her shoulder. A small creature who chirps at convenient moments. They do not see what I see. I see when her shoulders tense before anyone else notices. I see when his jaw tightens because he is choosing restraint over rage. I see the quiet glances they exchange across crowded rooms, the invisible threads they test and tug. I have watched her laugh with Ashlyn in ways she never did in the tower. I have observed her watching how Red measures rooms and finds comfort in something other than solitude. I have watched this kingdom settle into itself. I have also watched their losses. I have watched the ghosts that trail behind them all and the things they do not say. I remain because someone must remember.
On their wedding day, I walked Bella down the aisle, not because I needed that moment, but because she did. Her breath was steady, but her pulse raced beneath skin I have known since it was thinner and colder. She did not speak to me aloud as she walked the path, but she did not need to. You are here, she communicated with me silently. I am always here. I said silently in return. When the clearing opened, I witnessed Damien standing like a man braced for impact and salvation at once. I have seen many vows, and most are loud, ornate and hollow. Bella and Damien's ceremony was simple and dangerous in their honesty. When they lit the fire together, something settled in me. Not because I believe in destiny, but because I believe in choice repeated over and over. I have lived long enough to know that love is not the ceremony. It is the morning after, the quiet days, the bread shared, the argument over nothing, the hand at the small of her back when the world presses too close.
Bella has always understood that I am more than I appear. She still speaks to me when no one is looking. She still asks for my opinion on matters kings and councils debate. I answer the only way I can with a flick of my tail, a slow blink, a deliberate stillness. She reads me like scripture. I do not know how much longer this body will serve me. Time is a strange companion. I have shed skins and cities alike, I have outlived dynasties, but if I must anchor myself to one life, let it be this one. Let it be the girl in the tower who licked snow with me and decided not to be small. Let it be the woman who stood before a fire and chose a man who chose her back. I have been around since the dawn of time. I have witnessed empires rise and fall. But this—This is the first time I have stayed not because I was curious, but because I was content.