[private] i am brambles but i am tangled in your love; nightlock

[wonder]

Wonder

She blinks in the early morning sun with a sense of peace in her heart she never thought she would be capable of finding. But there has been no hint of war in the past many months, no rising tensions between the lands - or, at least, no more than usual. It is hard for terror to linger indefinitely when you start to forget the way the trees had looked when they burned, or the way shadow had come alive and vicious, the way blood smells like iron when it spills over volcanic stone.

There are too many good memories to push them back, too many good days full of moments with Nightlock and their incredible family. It is so easy to lean into those instead. Not to forget the past, but to let it rest awhile until it chooses to rest no more.

The sun catches and glints in the delicate gold rosettes that fall in uneven rows across her back as she stretches and turns from where she had been watching the soft, rolling waves create ridges along the surface of the ocean. As always the day is bright and warm, and even the breeze seems sleepy as it climbs along her skin to lift her mane in shining copper tangles. Distantly along the horizon, she can make out the dark smudge of sooty storm clouds, but they seldom ever come this far.

She turns from the ocean and the sunshine to face the volcanic mass behind her again, distracted by the way the light flashes in places made molten and now hard again. It is a beautiful place to live, though sometimes it feels like something is missing. Someone. The children are still small and new, all bright eyes and bold smiles, legs too long for bodies not yet made for grace. But every day that passes, they grow in some way she thinks her mother eyes can see, a subtle sharpening as though they are being carved by the world to fit into it better. Will Brigade ever see them as they are now? All doe-eyed and free the way they had been together before life happened in the way that it always does. She worries that he will not.

There’s a silhouette in the shadows below the volcano that draws a soft smile across the curve of her beautiful mouth as soon as she notices him. He is still the most breathtakingly handsome shade of steel grey and storm wings she has ever seen. “Enjoying the view this morning?” She asks with a soft laugh, those teal eyes glowing with warmth as she closes the distance between them to press her lips to the heavy curve of his jaw. It is no less amazing now than it was at first when she ducks beneath his neck and against his chest, and he pulls in her without question. Home is the thrum of his pulse against her shoulder, the echo-beat of the wildest heart she’s ever known. It is the sound of his feathers and the scent on his skin - sun and cedar and now her, too. “I love you.” She reminds him with a kiss to the corner of his lips, feeling shy and like silver starlight beneath the weight of such a beautiful promise.

i am brambles but i am tangled in your love

[Nightlock]

— I'll break you a hundred different ways —

He watches her sometimes, when she isn’t looking – when she is being herself, or when she is with their children.

He is afraid of suffocating her, afraid that if he is always there then she will find that he is too much, too close, and that he will drive her away. Such a peculiar thing, for a man like him to worry about. The man that had once cared only for solitude, the man that once was afraid of growing accustomed to what the warmth of her body felt like next to him, and so he had made sure to always leave before he could memorize her.

And now – now, he cannot imagine a day or night without her, or their children. He had gone from being alone to being nearly smothered, and stoic though he may be, he wouldn’t trade them for anything.

And so he watches her, the darkness of his eyes caressing her curves from a distance, knowing that if he wanted, he could meet her at the surf and drag her to him. She was his, just as he was hers. These moments apart were rare, and though he ached for her, from the marrow of his bones, he appreciates the way she looks from where he stands. The same way she had looked when he first saw her, red and white against the turquoise of the ocean, with sea-green eyes that had looked straight into him. The same way they do now, when she turns her back on the waves and looks at him, her beautiful eyes colliding with his guarded gaze and crashing right through.

“Always,” the word is spoken in his rough, graveled voice, but the sound is softened by the crooked smile on his face. She knew full well he was only looking at her; the sky could have been falling behind her and he wouldn’t have noticed.

He meets her half-way, reaching for her the moment she is close enough. His neck rests over the top of hers and he pulls her into his chest, pressing his lips into any skin he can find and breathing her in. “I love you, too,” he had never expected those words to be so easy to say, but for her, they fall from his lips like rain. His nose remains buried in the waves of her mane, reveling in how she smells like the sea, like him, and like their family. And for a moment all he does is breathe, letting the serenity that she brings settle into the wildness of his veins. Finally, he breaks their quiet, asking with a bemused curiosity, “It’s awfully quiet. Where is everyone?” With six children – Choke, the quadruplets, and Despoina – any sort of quiet was a rarity, and as he had learned with this particular group, not always a good sign.

— and I'll make you remember my face —

Nightlock