Her name on his lips, one word, two syllables, just an exhale of sound catching in the wind and she can feel her heart trembling in her chest. It beats and aches and batters at the confines of her ribs like a bird trapped in a small cage. She blinks once and time seems to slow down for a moment. Those dark eyelashes like spiders racing across her skin, the sound of his hooves in the loamy forest floor echoing each pounding beat of her racing heart. Still she does not move, but she does not have to and suddenly Shah is wrapped around her in the warmest embrace, though there is the hint of something urgent in the way his nose dances across the crushed velvet of her skin. She feels it too, like the static and steel trembling in the air before a storm.
“Shah.” She whispers again, her voice soft and tremulous, and oh, how her heart races for those shadowy forgotten corners in her chest. But even as she holds it fast, doubt seeps like poison staining everything in purple and regret. She tenses and untangles herself from his embrace, those bruised gold eyes flashing uncertainly to his steady face. There is only mottled blue and black, only those quiet brown eyes that seem a little heavier somehow. But she blinks and like an echo, like a memory cut out of the past, she sees the purple stallion. Her breath catches and her brow furrows but like the tide against the shore, she crumbles back against him. “Shah.” She says again, just one more time, tracing the curve of muscle along the slope of his shoulder with gentle lips. But where once the gesture had been quiet and innocent, wide-eyed and curious, she was certain he would be able to trace the desperation seeping from each touch.
Maybe they were just two sinking souls not entirely sure they wanted to stay afloat, but wholly certain they did not want to sink alone.
It feels like forever that she stays crushed against his chest, willing that long-lost sensation of belonging to tattoo itself like a brand on her heart. But forevers always end too soon and slowly she is pulling away from him again, tracing her lips against the curve of his jaw and down the narrow slope of his chin before pulling away to watch him with shadow and secret like a stain across her delicate face. There are a dozen things she could tell him, a dozen thoughts bouncing around like dropped beads in her head. But only one thought ever makes it past the ice and uncertainty.
Her face softens with an unnameable emotion, those impossible golden eyes half hidden beneath the uncertain furrow of her brow. “I should have stayed with you, Shah. I should have stayed. I think I’ve lived a whole lifetime since the last time I saw you and none of it was right.”
ILKA
makai x oksana