this is the first day of my life; leliana

[leliana]

I see a ghost out on the water; I swear it has my face
I bend and drink the lonely down, the lonely down

She tucks away the sadness, folding it small and hiding it deep.

This was not the time to let it consume her. This was not the time to be consumed by it.

She turns blindly into the warmth of him, the alien feeling of her against his scaled body, the promises that they whisper to one another in the dark and the quiet. I am yours, she thinks, again. 

I am yours. I am yours when the sky breaks and the nightmares give way. I am yours when the ground cracks underneath me and swallows me whole. I am yours—all of me. Almost. Almost all of me. Except the parts too ugly to be loved. The parts shattered beneath heel and time and toxic love. Not those. Never those.

She doesn’t word such things, doesn’t think to tell him about the parts she withdraws, the edges that she smooths over. She just closes her eyes to the feel of his mouth against her, the quiet beauty of them coming together, the sound of anchor and port. Finally. She smiles at his question, shyly pressing her head into the curve of his neck so that he cannot see the joy that sweeps over her at him wanting her.

At him choosing her.

“Tephra, mostly,” she answers softly, “but I wander. It doesn’t feel like home anymore.”

Not like him. Not the smell of him, the touch of him, the quiet strength of him.

“I would follow you anywhere,” she finally whispers, ripping what is left of her heart and handing it so easily to him. For all of the demons and ghosts that haunt her, she cannot stop the way that she so quickly follows him, her footsteps echoing as she descends, as she consumes the pomegranate without question.

He is home. He is sanctuary. He is her future.

Again, she feels the slightest fluttering in her stomach, the beginning of the life they created beginning to stir, the whisper of a family, and the happiness radiates across her features, softening them even more.

“Will you take me home?”

I’m gonna stand here in the ache until the levee on my heart breaks