[private] you do and don't belong to me

[firion]

FIRION

It is hard to remember the pain that once driven him so sharply.

The pain that manifested in him and throughout him. Defined him throughout all of his young years. It feels like reaching for a dream to try and touch it now—feels like trying to carve out the truth of a statue from a bolder. His touch is clumsy and the vision of it slips away before he can grasp it, turning to dust in his mouth. Not that he minds. It is a strange thing to be so severed from what used to be the all of him, but he would rather rest in this new peace than resist the nightmares of old. He would rather die in it.

So he shakes the discomfort, that vague feeling of forgetting something, and he thrusts himself into this new rhythm of life. The rhythm of life where he is not just the biological father of offspring, but an involved dad. Where he watches the twins grow alongside Mazikeen. Where he does his best to fortify the borders of her kingdom and provide protection to the residents of her home (theirs, he reminds himself).

If he second-guesses himself, if he doubts himself, he ignores the feelings. If he is unsure of what to do next and how, he casts it aside. Instead, he wakes this summer morning with a faint smile, groaning as he rolls over and buries his golden face in her velvet neck. “Do we have to get up,” he grins, eyes shut tight and his voice gritty with the sound of exhaustion. “Or can we just stay here all day instead.”

The sun glints unrelenting at them through the trees and without thinking, he throws up an arched shadow over them, muting the sun and darkening the space where they lay against one another.

“I could just make it night again. It wouldn’t even be that hard.”

so as our grief falls flat and hollow upon a billion blooded seas
all our worst ideas are borrowed (you do and don't belong to me)

@Mazikeen

[Mazikeen]

mazikeen

Some days this life felt more dreamlike than others, some days the worries that she would find a way to corrupt it and cause it all to scatter felt like they were choking her. As time moved on, such days grew fewer but still the worries persisted, an itch at the back of her mind. How long could their safety last this time? Had she grown boring by becoming happy?

But they both stay instead of running, and it is often the small things that help keep her from allowing these troubling thoughts to become storms - like waking up on a summer morning hearing his groaning protest about the start of a new day. The sleepy, hazy smile that his touch inspires only grows as he asks whether they could just stay here all day.

Though there was always a list of things that Mazikeen could do, none of them were pressing. Certainly not enough to encourage her to get up from where she was, comfortable and warm next to Firion. Anything that was waiting for them in the light of day, now obscured by the shadow pulled over them, could continue to wait. His shadows continued to produce no fear in her - they had only ever been comforting since that day by the sea when he had found her and held her.

She doesn’t want to move, but she does shift her tail into that of a tiger’s - striped black and white as it whacks lightly against his golden skin after he proclaims that it wouldn’t even be that hard to make it night again. While being mostly sure he is joking - she also fully believes he could do such a wondrous thing. “Well, you do look good in moonlight.” Is all she remarks about that idea, not minding it one bit as her tail returns to long white and black strands and she shifts her weight enough that what little space between their bodies is gone and she is nestled right against him.

In a sleepy but playful voice, she lets herself seriously entertain the idea of not moving at all. “We might get hungry, but for someone who would find it easy to change the world from day to night - I’m sure producing food would be no bother at all.” Teleport it in from somewhere else in Beqanna for breakfast in bed.

As she wakes up a little more fully, though, the teasing note fades away in her voice and is replaced by concern as she asks “Did you not sleep well?”

@firion