09-08-2021, 05:07 PM
It feels like an entire lifetime has passed since she last saw him, feels like someone else’s lifetime, she thinks with a note of hidden solemnity. The dark was something that had been burned into her like a brand, something she would be forever marked by, forever changed by. But beneath a sun that always rose and a morning that always found her already awake to be sure of its prescience, it became easier to forget. To make herself forget.
“Laurelin!” She exclaims, and there is an instant smile on her delicate face, an instant brightness to erase the weariness in her eyes - a weariness certainly not meant for him to see. He would care nothing for the nightmares that woke her on the nights she did manage to sleep, the fear that lingered on the nights she couldn’t. “Glad to see you made it. Safe to assume you were not eaten by a monster?” She is teasing and smiling and it is not lost on her that there should still be a lingering horror to the shape of her question. How clever time was at soothing the edges of such old, ragged wounds. At making them feel safe again.
He is just as beautiful as she remembers, maybe even more so now that she can examine him openly in this full light. Blue like gemstones, gold like ore, perfectly marked here and in her memories of him. It is harder to see the sparks now that she remembers lifting from his hair like embers, and that soft ethereal glow is swallowed by the noon sun, but there is a glittering to his skin that she had not noticed before. He refracts as many pinpoints of light as the snow does around them - like a billion sleeping stars in a midnight sky. He is so effortlessly beautiful.
She wants to reach out and stroke her lips against his beautiful blue cheek, to touch him and confirm that he is as real as the sun and the sky, as real as she is. But she thinks there is a certain level of closeness she has since managed to convince herself of in all this time that has passed between them, and so she refrains from reaching out with anything more than this easy, open affection in her eyes.
And oh! Her eyes! All at once her smile is something soft and beaming bright, because she remembers that he hasn’t seen her yet. In the dark she was something muted, something consumed - barely more than a shell of herself as the eclipse stole the sunshine from her too. “Burning bright.” She promises, easing closer to him because she cannot help it, because she knows no other way to ease this gentle ache inside her chest. But then she’s lifting her wings for him so that the feathers are consumed by light at everything single edge, so that light beams from them and from her and there is a sudden, literal heat that emanates from her shining golden skin. She knows he must have already noticed them, but she meets his gaze with a burning kind of gentleness so that he can see the rings of burning plasma in her quiet eyes.
“As you can see, I’m usually the prettiest one in any conversation.” She says, and there is so much warmth and amusement dancing in those sunfire eyes. “But I suppose I can live with second prettiest when it comes to us.” She smiles again, all warmth and fondness as she lets her wings settle a little lower against her sides again. “I really am so glad to see you again.” She says, a little softer now, ignoring that urge to reach out and embrace him. “Have you been well?”
aureline
dear wilderness, be at your best
her armor is thin as the fabric of her dress