used to have a lot, but i got more now, adna

[adna]

and if you're still breathing, you're the lucky ones
‘cause most of us are heaving through corrupted lungs

She doesn’t expect the kindness of him extending his wings over her—doesn’t expect it and doesn’t know how to respond to it. Part of her wants to violently push it away, lashing out and sinking fang into his flesh for daring to soften the world around her, and another part of her wants to sink into it. She’s not sure which reaction, which desire, is more frightening. So, instead, she does nothing. Instead, she remains still as he bumps the velvet of his nose into the curve of her cheek, her sage eyes sliding to his own.

“Ophanim,” she repeats the name, letting her youthful tongue wrap around the syllables of it.

It’s not a name like any she has heard before—the vowels more pronounced, the edges of it softer—and she finds that she likes the way that it sounds. “Ophanim,” she says again, trying it out before nodding, the motion a little mechanical and a little curt. “I like it,” and it should be a compliment but her serpent tongue makes the words a little too sharp for it to be flirtatious or coy.

But there is nothing sharp about him.

Nothing painful or cruel or dark.

Just kind eyes and golden lines and that strange angelic beauty that engulfs him.

“I don’t normally wander,” she admits, because she’s always been someone who sticks close to home and family and those she loves. “I think I was running away, but I can’t even do that right.” She frowns, the shadow of it chasing across her face, pinching her lips. “I just,” she exhales, glancing up to search his eyes.

“Have you ever just needed to find a place to breathe?”

A brief laugh as she shakes her head, water droplets falling from the angles of it.

“Probably not,” she sighs, feeling alone.

adna

we're setting fire to our insides for fun
collecting pictures from a flood that wrecked our home

@[Ophanim]