all the weight of my intentions; levi

[isle]

She has not found the strength to leave yet. She knows she should go, it would be best if she left, wouldn’t it? But instead she haunts the outer islands like a quiet-eyed ghost, as lost to the world as her heart is to her chest. It should be there somewhere, beating and humming, but this pain tells her that it’s gone, missing, an open wound that will not heal. She loves him still, will always love him. Loves their beautiful family, too. But they are so different, more different than either had realized, perhaps, and the forever she had expected had been cut in half, and then half again. It should have made it easier that it was her choice to walk away, her decision to unravel and fall apart. But it didn’t lessen the hurt or the pain or the fear of this new unknown. Of what a life without him might be like.

I want this, I want you, he had said in a kiss against her skin, and she believed him, of course, he would never lie about that. He did love her. But then he had pressed a new truth to her skin with lips that left her feeling burned and carved empty. I have betrayed you again.

Too different, she thinks again, but not bad. Not when they had made such a beautiful family together. Not when the gravity between them was so strong and so right. It just wasn’t enough to hold them together, two irregular pieces of a puzzle, seams that just wouldn’t line up. She was too selfish maybe, asked for more than she should, more than he had ever promised. But it hadn’t been bad, only this end was.

She stands on a beach of white sand, her mane dark and half-dried in tangled curls against her neck. From here she can see the smolder of the volcano, see the rigid red peak and smell the familiar aroma of brimstone on the humid air. It chafes to be this close to everyone, to feel the hum of minds pushing against hers, words and thoughts and phrases unwelcome - but she has never been good at pushing them out. Only Offspring had been able to coax more control from her. More quiet, more peace. She shouldn’t be so close, shouldn’t be here at all but the idea of leaving feels wrong, too.

Her eyes are soft and dark, sad when she hears the rustle of a body travelling nearby and she turns warily to let them fall across a face like hers and like his, a boy who isn’t a boy at all but a man now. “Levi.” She breathes, slipping forward to touch her nose to his muzzle and his cheek and the curve of a muscular neck. He is so much of both of them. Of Isle and Offspring. She sees so much of his father in him, large and built for strength - her back barely comes to his hip - with a wide chest and sloping shoulders, thick feathering on all of his legs. But he is like her too, her brown and her white, beautiful like both of them, and an eye from each. One red and burning, a living coal buried in a perfect face, one dark and brown, wild like hers. “My Levi.” Her voice is whisper soft, made so fragile by the loss of her heart.

She ducks beneath his neck and against his chest, the soft ridge of her brown shoulder pressed to him as she turns her head to lay her cheek against him. “Do you still hate this?” She asks quietly and closes her eyes, remembering how stoic and independent he had always been as a boy. He had never needed her coddling. His sister had been much the same, both of them so wild.

She smiles faintly.

There is pressure in her head, his thoughts made loud by such close proximately, and they leak through despite her effort to block him out. The words feel like ants in her mind, milling and methodical, confusing, though, because it is only disjointed jumbles. Hyaline, fire, home. With a sigh she rubs her cheek against his shoulder and then pulls back a little, those dark eyes lifted to trace this face that is both so new and so familiar. He’s older now, a man instead of a boy, and all of the softness she remembers from the past has been replaced with hard lines and sharp angles - beautiful, though she doesn’t say so. Instead she says, “I’m glad you’re here.” And, touching her lips to his forehead in a quiet kind of kiss, “How are you, love?”

@[Levi]  let me know if anything at all needs to be changed, and totally feel free to let him feel the pressure of her mind on his, i'm good with anything <3

[Levi]

Levi had used the winter to learn. He had never stopped moving, a dark shadow roving the lush tropical landscape without urgency. He was learning every dip and rise in the land - discovering hiding places, freshwater, and venomous serpents. He needed to know the land if this was now his home. He would learn every inch of Tephra first, the residents later. Thepra, the soil and stones, would be here long after every soul had wander to other worlds.

Except for his, he intended to stay.
His father had given him many gifts, time would tell if immortality was one of them.

Levi had found her during his wandering, saw a glimpse of her dark coat so like his, but he had not approached her. He was not ready. A day had passed, he had felt no need to rush their reunion; he had taken time to think about the tightness in his chest the sight of her had caused him. But his reflection had not been as productive as he had hoped.

So finally, he sought her out.
His large frame was not made for moving stealthily, the ferns and young trees around him part  unwillingly as he tears a new path across this outer island. His heavy hooves sink into the softness of the white sand as he pushes aside the last young palm marking the border between beach and jungle.

Her gentle ghostly eyes strike him.
But he does not falter in his approach, he has come too far to turn back now. Like the child he no longer is he falls into her embrace. Did she know? Would she be angry? He couldn't  remember seeing her truly angry before he had left home, but he couldn’t remember her keeping out of sight, alone, on outer islands either. Why was she not with father? She places herself below his chin and the thoughts he has tumbled in his mind for the last day surface at her motherly touch. She was too good for them all.
He had an idea, but he didn't want it to be true. He had just come back, he had just come home. 
  
“Do you still hate this?” She says with the softness in her voice her remembered better than the lines of her face. He thinks for a moment… “Not so much now.”  His voice was rough for one so young, weeks of disuse and years of smoke had flavored his words with caramel. Her nearness put their size difference in sharp relief - there is a fragility to her he had never noticed before and he feels concern prickling along his spine underneath his curiosity.

There is a small tugging on his mind, and it reminds him of someone and the way she had touched his thoughts and altered his vision. But this touch is less intentional, it would be barely noticeable if he had not felt a similar sensation before.

Rapture.
But she had stirred feelings in him he wasn’t ready to discuss, especially not with his dam, so he thinks on her no more.

Isle places a kiss between his mismatched eyes, and he holds steady just long enough for her to complete the gesture before pulling away and looking out over the ocean.

“How are you, love?” Again, he pauses. The awkwardness he feels with so many others he does not feel with his mother, but he takes the question literally as he too often does. He searches for an answer when a "good, good." would do. He didn't have name for the feelings he felt. Looking back, his wild confused eyes finds hers... had she always been so fragile? He is afraid the wrong words could shatter her, one of the very few he truly cares about.

"Well, I'm home now... "
What happened back then doesn't matter now.
.

Levi

so scream you, out from behind the bitter ache.