She stares at him unknowingly with simple wonder painting the clear ruby of her gentle face. He can see it there, in the crystal of her skin, the innocence and the hopefulness that comes with her youth. He wonders if he used to have that same awe-struck look, before his first dream rendered any sort of hopeful future into nothingness. All he knows is nightmares; can he even call them that, when they always come true? Was it a good dream? - and the same bitter coldness curls in his belly because of course it wasn’t. He grimaces, the white of his eyelids shielding his all-seeing eyes from her. The dreams are never good, little Flower. She curls in close to him and he allows the delicateness of her little body to do so, going so far to even extend the glowing white of his wing across her back, welcoming her in closer, protecting her beneath the downy of his wind-swept feathers that smell heavily of smoke and salt. He inhales deeply, almost shuddering as the humid night air enters him, still trying to shake the terrible scene that had just quaked him.
“I don’t have good dreams,” he tells her honestly, his gaze flickering out to the wrinkled dark ocean, allowing the rhythmic crash to desensitize him. His face is now stoic and expressionless, a hard stone as the salty spray from the ocean splatters across him. “And most of the time they happen when I’m not asleep.” He sighs, his eyes narrowing slightly as if looking for something out across the endless dark horizon. His brow furrows, lips pursing as his mind races, bitterness and hopelessness falling like a black veil across his face. “And they always come true.” Warden’s teeth clench tightly as his thoughts trickle back to the shards of her scattered across the sand, causing the muscles in his jaw to jump.
He is the reaper; the bringer of death and destruction.
He huffs, lifting his chin to the stars his father so readily looks to for guidance. Warden only finds silence in the sparkling dark, a great noiseless and uncaring expanse that would not answer any of his prayers as a child, and he doubts would answer to him now. He finds himself lost in their winking depths, studious and thoughtful. “Do you have dreams, Flower?” He asks her this to hopefully keep her from asking him more specifics about his vision, instinctively pressing himself a bit closer to her fragile body, a feeling of protectiveness that he cannot begin to understand unraveling itself within his chest. “Good ones, I mean?”
She is already so much braver than he can ever be; fear does not threaten to collapse her or drown her. But Warden can feel its strong fingers pressing against his throat, tightening with each breath like a viper. Even now, beneath the silence of stars and with a small girl at his side, the feeling swells.
Even now, he thinks, she is not safe.
WARDEN
@[flower]
