black ocean, cold and dark, any

[kensley]

i took the poison praying you'd feel it, too i wrapped my neck and prayed that you'd feel the noose He has changed. In more ways than just the fantastical. Kensley was born soft. Quiet. Lovely, even. He was born forgiving and sweet. There had been nothing peculiar about him. He had never doubted that he was loved or that he deserved to be. He had inherited his mother’s kindness, patience, temperance. And maybe he still is all of those things, but there is a darkness in him, too. Maybe it is grief tightened like a vise around his throat. Each beat of his heart echoes in the cavern of his chest and it feels like betrayal. He has afforded himself no forgiveness. Because it should have been his throat the tiger sunk its teeth into. Because he should have seen it coming and he should have cast himself between them. It is this that he’s thinking about when the soft nicker steals him from his thoughts. He lifts his head slow, blinks into the sunlight until he lands eyes on her. He turns to face her – the gesture a relic from his past life, a gentleman. One corner of his mouth stirs in a distant kind of smile as he studies her. She is not familiar and he makes no effort to try to place her. She stops short and he nods once. “Hello,” he echoes. “You can come closer,” he says, ducking his head to gesture with his nose toward the great swath of grass in front of him. “I don’t bite.” There is no mirth in his tone, though perhaps there should have been. And perhaps he still is the old Kensley simply drained of his warmth. shattered son of jarris and plumeria