[private] Piece by Piece | Canaan | Mature

[Canaan]

Canaan

You give my life direction; you make everything so clear.

 Ever the traveler, his wanderlust has become impossible to ignore, and thus the pale sandy shoreline and thick line of tropical foliage simply is not enough to keep him tethered. The sky held an allure that was irresistible, and the longer he remained grounded, the more urgent the itch to be elsewhere became. He did not belong to one territory, to one landscape. He never had. Even in his youth, he yearned for adventure, for constant and unyielding change. He longed for unpredictability, he craved to be tested, but not where his heart was concerned – and he had never felt more tested than he did beneath the cover of nightfall, beneath the pale moonlight, where the loneliness has become unbearable.

  And thus, he has returned.

  He is never far. A part of him teetered along the edge of Tephra, the volcanic island that had been his birthright, that his father once led (and rumor has it, his mother has taken the helm). His heart does ache at the sight of the pluming volcano, at the dark, glittering sand along its jagged shoreline – but he cannot bring himself to land, to touch the grassland that held all his childhood memories. The betrayal of his mother is still too sharp, too deep, and the wound had yet to heal.

  He wondered if it ever would.

  His gold-laced hazel eyes trace the distant outline of Ischia while his broad, russet wingspan hold tightly to a tendril of wind, brought forth from the center of his chest. He is one with the wind, and the wind is one with him, and he is quietly lost to his own memory as the tropical island brings him closer. Closer to Circinae, closer to Jah-Lilah – he would never feel that Ischia belonged to him, nor that he belonged to Ischia – but he belonged to them, and that was enough (just enough) to bind him to the soft and supple sand again.

  His legs carry him away from the frothing seafoam and to the luscious, thick foliage, where palm fronds caress the curve of his shoulder while his dark wings fold against the glimmer of gold covering his body. His heart thrums suddenly within his chest, as a distant, forlorn voice reaches out to him. Shrill but draped in sorrow, he moves effortlessly through the brush (parting the thick scrubbery aside with wind alone, forging a pathway to his melancholy lover). A pang of worry strikes his heart, making it skip a beat, but when his hazel gaze is finally settled upon her – a faint smile is drawn to his lips, as he is drawn to her, raw and vulnerable under a starlit sky.

  ”Jah-Lilah,” he murmurs when his dark lips brush along the roundness of her hip, tracing the swell of her belly (the moonlight is so dim and his caress so fleeting as he traces the column of her neck, he does not yet notice she is heavy with child, that life moves seamlessly beneath the beauty of her flesh). His muzzle brushes beneath her tangled tresses, under the entanglement of feathers adorning her hair, while his whiskered lips seek her own. To press a longing kiss where it belonged. ”I’m here.”

And even as I wander, I'm keeping you in sight.

@[Jah-Lilah]