11-13-2021, 07:59 PM
selaphiel
But he cannot let it mean any more than what it is: only a name, no matter how sweetly she says it.
And it is his name and everything that entails. It is his name and though it is a name for an angel, it is also a name tinged by certain darkness. Because his mother is kind and vibrant but his father is something else.
He exhales a shuddering sigh and conjures up a lopsided smile, a thing fueled by the thing that curls in her belly and thus his in turn. He does not thank her because he had not chosen the name and if he had, in fact, been given a choice he might have chosen something else.
Worthless, maybe.
(Isn’t that what Mazikeen had called the angels?)
Pathetic.
Coward.
There is some faint flicker in the glacial blue gaze as he turns it away from her to better absorb the gravity of her name.
Keyna.
But he does not have her courage, he cannot bring himself to echo it in his own voice. Not when it feels like something sacred. Something that he will undoubtedly carve into the walls of his chest alongside every other name that ever meant anything to him.
They fall into silence then and he tries to think of anything else he might tell her, anything else that will not pollute the air around them with sadness or worry or grief. But she stops then and he does, too, turning to look at her when she asks for a promise.
And she says his name again and he thinks this must mean something but he does not know what.
He swallows thickly, painfully, and hesitates only half a second before he breathes, “okay.”
(And the heart quivers with trepidation because he does not know what he’ll do if she asks him to promise something that he can’t, if he has to disappoint her, too.)
I just bite my tongue a bit harder
@keyna