08-09-2021, 08:30 PM
“Happy to do so again.” She says, repeats, and her dark, delicate mouth is the shape of mischief as she lets her gaze flit over the indifference of his expression. “Happy, hmm.” She turns her face to him more fully now, and there is a quiet kind of light trapped in the backs of those blue gemstone eyes that makes them flash in some shining, faceted way. “I’d have to see it to believe it, I think.” But there is nothing of that glacial coldness in her from their first meeting, nothing of the sharp edges and careful barbs. In fact, for a moment the only thing that fills her immediate thoughts is a sudden curiosity at what happiness would look like on her companion. Almost certainly alien - he is too rigidly beautiful, the lazy sharpness of a predator who perhaps doesn’t realize exactly what they are. Except that there is something inside her chest stubbornly reminding her of the wildling who had leapt from a cliff beside her - into the ocean, into a storm, into absolute uncertainty.
“Did you like it?” She wonders, and the suddenness of her question, of the change in conversation leaves her slate grey and shining gold face bare and vulnerable for a moment. “The jump, I mean.” For a moment she feels young again. She feels like innocence and naivety, like wild earnestness and unbroken trust. She thinks about the moment she jumped and the way it felt not like falling but like flying, the way she had felt free for the first time in so long that she had not immediately recognized the feeling. But she also thinks of the moment that flying had become falling and she had reached out in the tumultuous storm-dark for someone to help, to catch her. Had she reached for him? For the magic of the Pampas, of her mother? Or had she reached inside herself and found these wings so soft and gossamer, dark like storm clouds and gilded beneath in the metallic gold of lightning.
She had felt joy, complete and unmatchable, and then the emptiness of its absence as joy became fear and faith was replaced with rational thought.
Three seconds that had felt like an eternity as she realized the only thing she faced was a meaningless death.
“I’m glad you were there with me.” She says, and her face is a beautiful frown, her brows a furrowed line of delicate uncertainty. “You let me be the storm.” Wild and unpredictable, violent in temper, beautiful, maybe. “I think I needed that. Needed to let it out, maybe?” She shakes her head and her gaze drifts from his face again back out to the storm along the horizon.
Her thoughts are a tangle that pull her from him, thoughts that explode from her like dandelion fluff to disappear in a thousand different directions, stolen away by the storm gale. It is the sound of his laugh that draws her back in, the shape of the words he says so quietly. She shouldn’t have heard them, shouldn’t have noticed them in her drifting thoughts, but there is a gravity in him that keeps her tethered. She isn’t wise enough to be afraid of that. “Better to be fools together.” She tells him, and there is a firmness in her voice as her gaze settles against his, a collision of red and blue, of fire and glaciers. A smile slips across her serious mouth, a light in the backs of those sapphire eyes that glow with the same feeling of late summer nights, of stargazing instead of sleeping, of realizing the sun is the thing that is glowing beneath the horizon instead of the moon. It is simple exhilaration, easy joys, secrets.
“Then again,” her face is something unexpectedly radiant, like the way morning light is when it spills like pale, watery gold over sleeping flower petals, something almost tentative and yet entirely certain, something honest, “who watches someone jump off a cliff and thinks, hmmm what a good idea!” Amusement dances across her curved mouth, and there is warmth in the way she watches him, gratitude. She thinks about moving closer, settling beside his shoulder where she can reach out and touch the gold stardust shining in his skin. Instead she quiets. Her smile, her eyes, the laughter in her face. She becomes something more gentle, something besides the wild girl he had found in a storm, fueled by the pain and fury of every regret living inside her chest. She becomes the clouds heavy with rain, pale and gray and drifting, still but for the promise of what is to come. It isn’t like sorrow, isn’t some new kind of pain. It isn’t fury or impatience, or even the counterbalance of relieved elation.
It is the doubt of asking a question she knows he will not answer directly, the desire that he will do it anyways. “Why didn’t you just leave me up there? What made you stay.”
“Did you like it?” She wonders, and the suddenness of her question, of the change in conversation leaves her slate grey and shining gold face bare and vulnerable for a moment. “The jump, I mean.” For a moment she feels young again. She feels like innocence and naivety, like wild earnestness and unbroken trust. She thinks about the moment she jumped and the way it felt not like falling but like flying, the way she had felt free for the first time in so long that she had not immediately recognized the feeling. But she also thinks of the moment that flying had become falling and she had reached out in the tumultuous storm-dark for someone to help, to catch her. Had she reached for him? For the magic of the Pampas, of her mother? Or had she reached inside herself and found these wings so soft and gossamer, dark like storm clouds and gilded beneath in the metallic gold of lightning.
She had felt joy, complete and unmatchable, and then the emptiness of its absence as joy became fear and faith was replaced with rational thought.
Three seconds that had felt like an eternity as she realized the only thing she faced was a meaningless death.
“I’m glad you were there with me.” She says, and her face is a beautiful frown, her brows a furrowed line of delicate uncertainty. “You let me be the storm.” Wild and unpredictable, violent in temper, beautiful, maybe. “I think I needed that. Needed to let it out, maybe?” She shakes her head and her gaze drifts from his face again back out to the storm along the horizon.
Her thoughts are a tangle that pull her from him, thoughts that explode from her like dandelion fluff to disappear in a thousand different directions, stolen away by the storm gale. It is the sound of his laugh that draws her back in, the shape of the words he says so quietly. She shouldn’t have heard them, shouldn’t have noticed them in her drifting thoughts, but there is a gravity in him that keeps her tethered. She isn’t wise enough to be afraid of that. “Better to be fools together.” She tells him, and there is a firmness in her voice as her gaze settles against his, a collision of red and blue, of fire and glaciers. A smile slips across her serious mouth, a light in the backs of those sapphire eyes that glow with the same feeling of late summer nights, of stargazing instead of sleeping, of realizing the sun is the thing that is glowing beneath the horizon instead of the moon. It is simple exhilaration, easy joys, secrets.
“Then again,” her face is something unexpectedly radiant, like the way morning light is when it spills like pale, watery gold over sleeping flower petals, something almost tentative and yet entirely certain, something honest, “who watches someone jump off a cliff and thinks, hmmm what a good idea!” Amusement dances across her curved mouth, and there is warmth in the way she watches him, gratitude. She thinks about moving closer, settling beside his shoulder where she can reach out and touch the gold stardust shining in his skin. Instead she quiets. Her smile, her eyes, the laughter in her face. She becomes something more gentle, something besides the wild girl he had found in a storm, fueled by the pain and fury of every regret living inside her chest. She becomes the clouds heavy with rain, pale and gray and drifting, still but for the promise of what is to come. It isn’t like sorrow, isn’t some new kind of pain. It isn’t fury or impatience, or even the counterbalance of relieved elation.
It is the doubt of asking a question she knows he will not answer directly, the desire that he will do it anyways. “Why didn’t you just leave me up there? What made you stay.”
REVELRIE
it feels like falling, it feels like rain,
like losing my balance again and again
@Obscene