His teasing doesn’t do anything to rid her of those insecurities, though what follows in the shadows does. Altissima tries to let it all go, to believe that this is going to last beyond this chilly day. And though she might wish Tarian’s teasing hadn’t involved the words ‘tolerate you’ she believes they both mean what they share as they wait out the sun and the echoing of those teasing words in her mind stops for a time.
When the moon arrives, Altissima follows him - amused by the quiet care with which he leads her across the uneven terrain. She’s incredibly curious about what he wants to show her, eager to share something else with him.
Once they are there, she understands instantly - her eyes shining a deep shade of indigo.
There’s a soft, reverent smile playing across her features as she drifts past him and just inside of the cave to stand there amongst the blooms - her eyes bright as she takes it all in. It’s beyond beautiful and she doesn’t hesitate to lower her head to brush her nose against one of the flowers while Tarian talks.
I’ve been calling them Altissimas
She freezes, tension rushing back into her body. Her eyes shift through the full range of colours that they know and don’t settle on one, each shade bleeding into the next while her first response comes out as a shaky, almost-silent “What?”
As if she didn’t hear him.
As if she didn’t know right in that exact moment what the name was for how that made her feel - and how that sets off a confusing churn of other emotions inside of her.
Altissima doesn’t lift her head or her eyes - she just stares at the blooms he’s given her name while her blood pounds in her ears and tears begin to form. Tarian is between her and the ocean, between her and escape, and though she hopes that is not the only thing keeping her from bolting, she knows that it helps. She won’t push past him so she has to stay where she is, frozen with nerves and shock.
How is this bigger than the way they’ve been spending the day? Possibly because she could explain away the rest if she tried, she could pretend it was just lust if she needed to try to salvage herself. So although she’s covered in his scent and has fresh memories of his touch - it is here, standing among the glowing flowers while the air twinkles around her, that Altissima realizes she’s in love.
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image by yoricade
@ Tarian
It had been their beauty that first drew Tarian to the glowing wildflowers that grew along the rocky Loessian coast.
The flowers hadn't taken root in the gentles of some meadow, or in a place where they could easily thrive, like the Brilliant Pampas. The wind could whip wildly against the shoreline. There was nothing of the soft, rolling hills that Loess was known for against this craggy shore. And yet, they had bloomed here, against all the elemental adversities. Tarian had taken great care leading Altissima here - grateful to his lunar light for once as it showed the loose stones and any missteps that could result in injury. The pair of them shine like the moon and the blue flowers, but it is neither of those things that hold Tarian's enraptured gaze.
It is Altissima.
He watches her reach for one of the flowers, and it cements something in Tarian in thinking that these two wonders were alike. Both held a delicate appearance, both should have been swallowed by the darkness, and yet here both were, glowing bright against all the odds. The gray stallion says nothing, instead cradling a breath that he wasn't aware of. Tarian has never been the best at conversation, and with Altissima, that is why he falls so often into their usual banter.
It is easier to do that than to pretend whatever this is exists.
That he and she might be something more than a few stolen moments.
That he will miss her when she goes, that he has thought about her when she is gone.
Tarian says nothing because, for the first time in a long time, he's afraid. He's afraid that he's ruined whatever fledgling trust they've built and to speak will crumble the newly-discovered ground beneath them. He knows her well enough - has felt her against him - well enough by know and the silver stallion can see the way she visibly tenses. All that easy freedom that she carries with her leaves and for one horrible moment, she looks trapped. For one horrible moment, he realizes that he's the one that's done it.
The last thing he ever wants to make her feel.
How can he tell her that despite how fragile the flowers seem, their ferocity beside the sea is beautiful to him? That they made him think of her, not for the obvious reasons, but that these flowers seemed to dare every kind of existence? The tides to wash them away, the wind to uproot them, the rocks to tumble them down. And yet, each year despite the forces pitted against them, they bloomed here. That was what he thought of when he thought of Altissima.
"It's a pretty name," he tells her instead, hoping that these lighter words might be the ones to take the heavy weight from her.
TARIAN
@ Altissima
For just one moment, Altissima closes her eyes. She’s horrified that she’s crying, horrified that she cannot think of a single appropriate thing to say - horrified of the light tone he uses when he speaks again. Like she might spook - like he knows her well enough to see the tension in her - like she's let herself be known this well because he is, of course, right. And this isn’t a personal crisis, she may close her eyes for a breath but she isn’t alone. Everything she does affects him too. And it’s that thought that has her ever-changing eyes open and focuses on him.
Until she realizes she’s still crying and she’ll share a lot with him but this is mortifying.
Altissima doesn’t cry and certainly doesn’t do so in front of anyone.
Before she can continue being caught up in her head, she moves towards Tarian and maybe he’ll think she is trying to get around but she doesn’t. She steps close to him until their chests are pressed against each other and she is wrapping her neck around him. Maybe he can feel the rapid pace of her heart against his skin, how the tremor is back in her body like a wave that might take out her knees, but it only makes her hold him tighter. Anything to stop him from seeing the tears that blur her vision, until the world is just a hazy combination of their light.
Altissima wants to tell him that she is afraid of this thing between them, that this gesture is the kindest and sweetest thing anyone has ever done for her in a dozen years of life, that he is the first of anyone in the entire world that she wants to actually spend time with.
She wants to tell him that she loves him and even though she is afraid, even though there may be a part of her that wants to, she isn’t going to run. Even though she has nothing to give him that could ever possibly meet what he has just given her.
None of these words come out, though, not a single one makes it through the horrifying lump in her throat - she just presses her cheek into his skin wherever she can and inhales a shaky breath thick with his soothing scent.
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image by yoricade
@ Tarian
Tarian stands there, suspended in time, and existing only between the thunderous heartbeats inside his chest.
She doesn't turn past him and run, like some part of him had been afraid she might. She doesn't even try to tease him for his light words, doesn't try to engage him in any kind of banter so there isn't even that to fall back on. Instead, there is a moment looming that Tarian has feared more than any battle.
There is no way to fix what he's broken, though his mind races in a million ways to find a way to figure out how to undo all of this.
But this woman - as tempestuous as any storm - manages to tame the wild gale that is his thoughts. He can see the tears on her cheeks, shining beneath the moonlight, and yet as she approaches him, Tarian knows that these weren't the tears he was afraid of. This isn't the same kind of sadness that he saw peering out from his grandmother's eyes, grief from a life that had been too hard on the soul. Altissima reaches for Tarian and he wraps himself around her as she does him and they fit together in a way that he knows is right.
He's not entirely sure that he has ever fit in anywhere - Pariaso, Liridon, Loess - but he knows that at this moment, he fits right here. With her.
And Tarian understands at this moment, that sometimes, there aren't words. So when she presses her cheek against his, when she kisses where she can reach, Tarian presses his own into her and returns her embrace like he's already imagining her gone. That there will come a time where he will be hollow with ache just for the want of seeing her, let alone touching her. He touches her like the dream that he still sometimes imagines she must be, like he will wake and somehow this will all be gone; that she had been an enigma all along.
So Tarian answers her the only way he knows how, with each touch more real and reverent than the last. The only way he knows how to tell her, that this - them - is the most absolute thing that he has ever known.
TARIAN
@ Altissima
For a while, there are no words and then finally, blissfully, her thoughts begin to ease. Altissima no longer trembles against him like she’s been splashed with the cold water that she hates so much. Each touch that they share smooths away the harsh edges of all her fears. The desire to run fades, every point of contact between them giving her more reasons to stay. Confirming what she’s discovered tonight.
Her heart rate does not ease, but as his touch becomes a little more real and hers becomes more heated in response - it thunders for an entirely different reason. Altissima draws him a little into the cave, her eyes clear now and settled into that shade of blue-violet only he has ever inspired. In between peace and happiness (and now she knows it’s something else too). Can he tell, as he brushes away what remains of those tears on her cheeks, what it is shining there?
They don’t speak of it, not yet. No words pass between them for a while longer, and she dims the lights of the flowers, the moon, and what they’ve brought with them until it is just them together in the shadows.
---
Afterwards, back at the mouth of the cave and in the light, her wings are gone and she presses herself into his side. Altissima is content for the moment to be nestled under Tarian’s wing, where the rise and fall of his breathing pressing his sides against her is enough. And then she finally finds her voice. None of the thoughts that had been choking her just moments ago are what comes out, though. Instead she falls into an old pattern that will be easy for them both (she hopes). “You know you’re going to have to keep these flowers alive forever now.” She turns her head so she can brush a kiss against his jaw “I hope you have a green thumb, dear knight.”
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image by yoricade
@ Tarian
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![[Image: willowsticker_by_space1993_ddeo27s_small.png]](https://i.postimg.cc/Rq5q2nVX/willowsticker_by_space1993_ddeo27s_small.png)
