She is soothed by the nearness of him when he touches the flaxen softness of her hair. “Maybe not.” She says, but she is smiling in a quiet way because he should know by now that while she is full of poor choices, he (and the decision to be near to him) has never been one of them. “But I didn’t come out of obligation.” She tells him, following in his wake when he moves to pull away, because the absence of him is something she cannot abide. Her lips are soft where they reach out to touch him again, moving over bone made bright by the nearness of her own glowing skin. “Where else would I be at the end of the world except here by your side?”
And it does feel that way sometimes. Like there cannot be anything good left to follow in the wake of so much dark and violence. This is a world reduced to shadows and ruin, where the tides are unruly and the oceans heave, where plants wither and die and it is so much easier to see the bones once hidden beneath healthy flesh. Her eyes lift again to the sky, staring at the eye that looks back as though it knows she’s there below it. How had any of this happened? Why had the fairies let it carry on for so long? She knows, of course, that there must be more to it than she can possibly understand, but standing like this beside Nightlock in an abyss of starless night, it is hard not to feel abandoned by those she had once helped.
His words are a distraction, and she smiles at him, ducking her head to look over into his open face. “How?” She repeats, and there is a new note of teasing when she reaches out to trace her lips along the front curve of his neck. “Do you require reminding on how such things are possible?” Her pale sea green eyes alight with a shy heat that even this apocalyptic world can not chase away from her. “I would be more than happy to remind you.” Her kisses find his jaw and trace all the way down to the corner of his mouth.
But even these moments are not immune to the dark, and she can see the instant his softness is stolen away by something more harsh, by an invisible barrier that rises between them. “I’m not going anywhere.” She promises, and when his wings rattle and her eyes lift to watch them move and freeze and return to him, she can still recognize the gesture and it is all too easy to step closer, to let his love shield her from the dark. “But I would do anything for you, anything.”
There is quiet, and it is punctuated only by the pain in her stomach she has no reason to acknowledge yet, until he reaches for her and she cannot help the way her whole self alights in this closeness. She smiles again, not minding the harsh sound of bone against bone if it means he’ll stop holding himself back from her. And it’s like he reads her mind, because suddenly he’s reaching for her and she’s tucked beneath his neck, and it feels entirely like home. Like this is a place made only for her.
“I’m well.” She promises him, though the words come mildly out of breath and there is a restless sheen of sweat damp on her neck and hidden beneath her thickly flowered mane. She breathes out again, and the sound is made harsh when her muscles spasm and she leans into the sharp bones of his body. The magic leaves her in a subconscious way, fitting itself to the shape of her thoughts, to the wish that he might be made whole and soft again, that he might be able to hold her close in the moments of birth that move steadily closer.
It is as though the sky of old is what answers the call of a magic she still does not understand, as though starlight and shadow, the half-light of dusk and dawn all weave themselves around his body to be the meat and muscle and sinew stolen from him. She is unaware at first, eyes still closed in a wince until the pain passes and she recognizes that the weight at her shoulder is no longer sharp. Her eyes open, and there is such surprise in the gaze she turns on him, such wordless awe as her eyes roam the beautiful, almost membranous silhouette settled over Nightlocks bones that seems to solidify until he looks not unlike a spectre of himself.
She reaches out to him, unsure of what she’ll find, but there is an odd kind of resistance that meets her lips, something softer than skin but not warm. She counts dapples that she knows to be a perfect match, greets them with kisses because she does not know what else to do, and when she shifts closer to bury her face in the wisps of mane more beautiful than spider silk, she can smell only the cool crispness of a summer night. Her lips drop to settle in the crook of a shoulder she could trace in her sleep, and with eyes closed she follows a memorized path up the length of his neck and to his throat, then down the curve of his jaw until she feels the perfect shape of lips beneath hers and presses to them a shy, sweet kiss. “How is this possible?” Her eyes open again, and she feels wildly selfish for the ache that flares to life inside her, the desire to be touched and held after the absence of his softness for so long.
i am brambles but i am tangled in your love