05-10-2021, 10:30 PM
It is the firmness of his summer voice that commands her gaze back to him in a way she makes no effort to fight. It is like magnetism, like stars colliding. She blinks once and the urge to look away again nearly overwhelms her. It rises like a tide inside her chest, the weight of it so desperate to drown her that for a split second her breath catches in a ragged inhale that fills her ribs with dandelion wisps. But she steadies again and when her eyes fall back open they shine with a new, guarded intensity. An insult would’ve wounded her, but she would have understood it. His acceptance is far more unsteadying.
“Are you sure?” She asks, daring him to take his kindness back. There is a hardness that rises inside her, a stoniness inside her chest and between her ribs because she knows, she knows, how much it will devastate her if he changes his mind, even if she does not understand why. His opinion shouldn’t matter, it should mean nothing. He is a stranger, a wounded one at that. He should mean nothing to her because he is temporary and ephemeral. He is the changing of seasons, a blue sky never the same shade twice.
But of course he means more.
His smile disarms her and that almost furious scowl disappears from her face as she studies him more closely, softens in a way she only does when she is alone. But she is not ready for the way color bleeds from his skin, for the way chestnut bleaches to a white as bright as hers, or the way it darkens to a black as dark as the depths of the loneliest night. She knows what is happening before she can truly understand it, but when the colors find their jagged edges and his eyes blink once and reopen one black and one gold, she is stunned.
He is beautiful like this, though nothing is quite like his natural chestnut and shining gold - that will always be her favorite, she thinks. “It looks better on you than it does on me.” Her voice is an odd kind of fragile whisper, a bird with broken wings tossed into the wild of a raging storm. And though she doesn’t mean to, she finds herself pausing their walk to reach out and trace the place on his neck where white crashes against black in jarring fragments. “It’s strange to see it like this.” She says, and her voice is still something quiet as starlight. She touches the places in his mane where the colors change from black to white to black again, moves further down his neck to touch wings that are black above and shining like white-gold starlight beneath. “I’ve seen myself, but only in reflections. So everything seems backwards.”
She takes a step back and her eyes study him with such intensity that a man prone to worrying might balk. “You still have your stripes.” She notes, but there is something new in her voice now, something almost tremulous as she takes in the way those glowing patterns sit over the gold-drenched white of her own legs. It’s even starker across his haunches, the gold so brilliant against her smoldering black. “You’re both of us.” Her mismatched eyes are wide with something secret that she carefully tamps down inside her chest. A realization that how he is now could be what a child from them would look like, not unlike how she is pieces of both of her parents as well. She shies from it, abandoning the stripes to study his face again, to study her own face.
“It’s a little odd.” She disagrees, but all the edge has gone from her voice and there is something not unlike affection as she looks into the eyes of this stranger so willing to be open with her. She reaches up to brush her lips along the bright white marking at the center of his face - a diamond whose lowest point fell too far. On one side there is shining white-gold fur and a perfectly black iris, on the other a chasm of the blackest midnight thrust up against a perfectly golden eye. She touches the white-gold with a gentle smile, her lips like feather across his face. “I get this from my mother.” A murmur, whispered breath that warms his skin as she moves to touch the black side next. “And this from my father.”
She remembers herself then, withdrawing a half-step away from where she had been crowding him moments before, chastened. And, because she cannot help herself, cannot stop the question from falling like stardust through those dark, velvet lips, “Who are you, Nashua?” It is a wonder that someone like him exists, a wonder that he has been so kind despite her flares of temper and barbed retorts. There is nothing left inside her that wants to wall him off anymore, nothing that wants to fight to keep him away. “I was actually born in the Taiga. It’s where my dad lives.” It’ll seem random, a belated sharing of facts, but it is a kernel of truth she would not have given without him first earning it.
“Are you sure?” She asks, daring him to take his kindness back. There is a hardness that rises inside her, a stoniness inside her chest and between her ribs because she knows, she knows, how much it will devastate her if he changes his mind, even if she does not understand why. His opinion shouldn’t matter, it should mean nothing. He is a stranger, a wounded one at that. He should mean nothing to her because he is temporary and ephemeral. He is the changing of seasons, a blue sky never the same shade twice.
But of course he means more.
His smile disarms her and that almost furious scowl disappears from her face as she studies him more closely, softens in a way she only does when she is alone. But she is not ready for the way color bleeds from his skin, for the way chestnut bleaches to a white as bright as hers, or the way it darkens to a black as dark as the depths of the loneliest night. She knows what is happening before she can truly understand it, but when the colors find their jagged edges and his eyes blink once and reopen one black and one gold, she is stunned.
He is beautiful like this, though nothing is quite like his natural chestnut and shining gold - that will always be her favorite, she thinks. “It looks better on you than it does on me.” Her voice is an odd kind of fragile whisper, a bird with broken wings tossed into the wild of a raging storm. And though she doesn’t mean to, she finds herself pausing their walk to reach out and trace the place on his neck where white crashes against black in jarring fragments. “It’s strange to see it like this.” She says, and her voice is still something quiet as starlight. She touches the places in his mane where the colors change from black to white to black again, moves further down his neck to touch wings that are black above and shining like white-gold starlight beneath. “I’ve seen myself, but only in reflections. So everything seems backwards.”
She takes a step back and her eyes study him with such intensity that a man prone to worrying might balk. “You still have your stripes.” She notes, but there is something new in her voice now, something almost tremulous as she takes in the way those glowing patterns sit over the gold-drenched white of her own legs. It’s even starker across his haunches, the gold so brilliant against her smoldering black. “You’re both of us.” Her mismatched eyes are wide with something secret that she carefully tamps down inside her chest. A realization that how he is now could be what a child from them would look like, not unlike how she is pieces of both of her parents as well. She shies from it, abandoning the stripes to study his face again, to study her own face.
“It’s a little odd.” She disagrees, but all the edge has gone from her voice and there is something not unlike affection as she looks into the eyes of this stranger so willing to be open with her. She reaches up to brush her lips along the bright white marking at the center of his face - a diamond whose lowest point fell too far. On one side there is shining white-gold fur and a perfectly black iris, on the other a chasm of the blackest midnight thrust up against a perfectly golden eye. She touches the white-gold with a gentle smile, her lips like feather across his face. “I get this from my mother.” A murmur, whispered breath that warms his skin as she moves to touch the black side next. “And this from my father.”
She remembers herself then, withdrawing a half-step away from where she had been crowding him moments before, chastened. And, because she cannot help herself, cannot stop the question from falling like stardust through those dark, velvet lips, “Who are you, Nashua?” It is a wonder that someone like him exists, a wonder that he has been so kind despite her flares of temper and barbed retorts. There is nothing left inside her that wants to wall him off anymore, nothing that wants to fight to keep him away. “I was actually born in the Taiga. It’s where my dad lives.” It’ll seem random, a belated sharing of facts, but it is a kernel of truth she would not have given without him first earning it.
ILLUMINAE
we can't dream when we're awake,
or fall in love with a heart too strong to break
@[Nashua]