09-19-2021, 05:37 PM
selaphiel
She says she’s not all right and his heart spasms. (The heart is a strong one and he feels the pain of this acutely. It sinks into the marrow of his bones and he wonders what he might do to help her. But he is just a wayward angel carved from ice, there is nothing he can offer her, not really. And even if he could, would he be brave enough to try? He had asked her once if she was frightened, what death she had seen, and she had fled instead of giving him an answer and his loneliness is so tremendous now that he does not want to risk scaring her off again.)
She does laugh again, though it has nothing at all to do with him, and he can feel the pulse of her embarrassment. (Why can he feel these things? He has never been able to feel them before. It does not occur to him that she is giving rather than him taking.)
He smiles and nods. “I think it counts for a lot,” he says. It is an indication of strength, he thinks, but he does not say this out loud because he is not wise and he doesn’t want to sound like he’s trying to be. He just agrees with her and feels a little twinge of something he doesn’t have a name for when she invites him to walk alongside her.
He studies the ice that collects along the ladder of her spine and swallows thickly. He shouldn’t. (It is a specific kind of grief that steals through him, though he does not know how to recognize it as such just yet.)
“Okay,” he says finally and moves to follow wherever she sees fit to lead him. He is silent for a long moment as they fall into step together.
“I should apologize,” he says, quiet, “for the things I said the first time we met. I’m sorry, I didn’t know any better.”
I just bite my tongue a bit harder
@keyna