08-21-2021, 09:01 PM
selaphiel
(How it had delighted him to hear her say Sela once, because it had meant that they were friends. Because it had taken such a tremendous effort for him to call her Maze that day so soon after the sun had returned and he had self-consciously admitted that the eyes were so sensitive to the light when he’d been born in the dark. And she had invited him to walk with her and they were friends, the proof had been in the way they’d called each other by these abbreviated versions of each other’s long, complicated names.)
The sound of it, Selaphiel, has the opposite effect now.
His heart stutters and seizes, a vise closes around his windpipe, and he exhales a shuddering breath.
There is no ignoring the hint of annoyance in her tone either. (Has he imagined it?
No, he has not imagined it.)
He flinches, visibly recoils.
He does not know what has changed, only that it has.
(Does she blame him for not stopping the death? Can she still feel it the same way he can? With the vicious clenching in the chest, the burning in the eyes? Does she fight for every breath?)
He blinks at her, his friend, understanding that they are not friends anymore. But his loyalty has not changed. It will never change. He owes her his life, even still.
“I told you I wouldn’t leave you,” he tells her, not for the first time, voice unsteady. But it’s the truth and he exhales, long and slow, fighting hard to maintain his composure despite the way everything inside him is collapsing. This is the only thing in which he was ever resolute: his servitude to her.
But he has suddenly been reduced again to the terrified boy he’d been, waiting to be ejected. Has he overstayed his welcome? Is he no longer useful? He knows now that he had not imagined the edge of annoyance in her tone.
I just bite my tongue a bit harder
@Mazikeen