09-09-2021, 12:31 PM
selaphiel
Wilted in the face of Mazikeen’s ire, collapsed in the darkness.
And he wilts now, too. Wilts while she pleads with him to answer her. It gets the air jammed up in his windpipe, a vise tightened around his throat because he cannot give her what she needs and he can feel the cage of his ribs begin to tremble with the effort it takes to breathe.
She never looks away but he cannot meet her eye.
Look, child, look closely and see how this angel carved from ice is meant only to fail.
He cannot give you what you need from him.
Is this what he’d looked like when he’d encountered that girl in Hyaline and begged her to go? Desperate, pleading, eyes wide with panic. And the girl had scoffed in his face. But he does not shrug off this girl’s panic. If he could take it onto himself, he would. He would swallow it all if it meant sparing her from it.
The most he can offer her, though, is his uncertain answer.
And she sighs.
But she does not buckle.
He stares, eyes still wide, as she catches her breath and then burdens him with another unanswerable question. It is simple, sure—they are in the forest, but he understands that’s not really what she’s asking. The question is this: how did she lose her way, where is the memory of it, where is her father?
They were there, on the mountain, and he can smell the death on her still. His stomach twists. Had she witnessed the death? Is that why the stench is different? He swallows thickly and tilts his head, his halo tipping low over his brow as he studies her face.
“There was what?” he asks quietly.
I just bite my tongue a bit harder
@Falter