cold in the violence after the war
hope is a fire to keep us warm
Though she would never voice such a thing aloud, she too wishes their touch could be more than stone and fire. That she might feel her skin, warm and alive against hers without the chill barrier of unfeeling granite. It’s a pipe dream of course, but one for which she cannot seem to shake a lingering impossible hope.
Guilt drowns out those lingering thoughts however, as the brief snap of anger and irritability falls away. As Brinly’s lovely features soften with regret and sadness. Her assurances that she bears no fault are consumed by the overwhelming knowledge that it is not true. She had known the beast had been lingering around Nerine. She had foolishly thought that when he slunk away the first time it would be the last.
But she had been wrong. Her overconfidence had stayed her vigilance. Every word and breath, the glaring reality of this moment, remind her of her failure.
(There are so many now though. Accumulating faster than she can correct them.)
She wants to refute those assurances, but the words stick in her throat, mired in her own guilt. Instead she presses closer once more, expressing the things she cannot say through the language of her touch. But where once she might have tucked her masked head against Brinly’s shoulder, she faces the gruesome reminder of the foreign sweep of horns ornamenting her skull.
Instead she finds herself pressing stone lips against her shoulder, eyes squeezing closed as though that would erase everything that had happened.
“As if he could,” she finally responds, a faint bite to her voice as she answers the question Brinly had expressed with such an uncommon concern. “He didn’t…” she swallows abruptly as the thought occurs to her in the wake of Brinly’s worry. “He didn’t hurt you either did he?”
Oh gods, she hoped not. She would actually have to murder him if he had.
Brazen