05-09-2021, 06:59 PM
His question surprises her and for a moment those brown eyes stumble across his face again, searching for any hint of a reflection as to the mood inside his chest. But she thinks he is like oceans too vast to know the depths of, like skies that hide stars and planets beyond their aching blues. There is more, she thinks, but it is not for her to see.
“What’s it like to not have the sun inside you?” She counters, those quiet eyes finally falling still on that too-beautiful face. But her mouth finds a smile and it slips across her lips like a sliver of sunshine as she studies that gentle way his head tilts with the weight of his curiosity. “Normally it’s the best.” She says, and her smile grows for a moment, but fades with the wistfulness that enters her eyes and dims them even darker. “Sometimes it seems like I can actually feel it up there in the sky. Like, the echo of it. It wakes me in the morning and leaves me at night, but there is always some part of it burning steadily away inside me. An ember left behind to keep me safe.”
She laughs then because she knows this is the talk of children and daydreams, of stories she should have grown out of. But it all comes from the same kernel of belief nestled inside her chest. “I hope it comes back and I can see you again, because I think that would make it easier to understand.” The glowing, the radiant heat from her skin. The molten ring of her irises. It had endured for a short while, but then the life of it had guttered beneath the weight of this false-dark, this absence of light.
There is a moment where she falls quiet again, buried under some weight he will not be able to understand. Her brow knits tight and the smile fades until the corners of her mouth are tipped down with the heaviness of her hurt. She blinks, blinks again, and then when she is finally able to claw her way out of the quiet she gently tosses the long waves of her dark forelock away from her face. “There might still be a hint of it in my eyes.” She says, whispers as she leans in a little closer and holds still. “They used to be every shade of burning gold and copper, the darkest shades like garnet. Last I looked there was only a small sliver of it left, like a shadow at the edge of the pupil. I haven’t looked recently though.” It is gone now, of course, she didn't really need to have looked to know that the last of it had fled her weeks ago. All he would see now is the warm honeyed shade of brown, just like her mother.
aureline
dear wilderness, be at your best
her armor is thin as the fabric of her dress
@[Laurelin]