— I'll break you a hundred different ways —
Tephra had been their haven for so long that he had nearly forgotten what his life was like before it—what it was like before her. Whatever had existed in the time before her felt like a different lifetime, and in a way, it was.
Because he has shed down to the bone and rebuilt so many times since then that there is no longer a piece of him that she has not touched.
He is stripped down before her every night, and it is there that she has etched herself across his ribs, and it is behind those ribs that every morning a heart crafted for her regrew, held together by skin that has only ever known her and her alone.
He had not been looking for heaven but he had found it, and has so fully engrossed himself in her and their world that sometimes he does not even remember that he is wholly undeserving of something as pure as what exists between them. When he does not have to look at the rest of the world and compare himself against all of those that he knows could serve her better he is able to lose himself to her entirely, without fear or hesitation.
The cursed king and his nightmares that had ravaged their home was like being startled awake from a dream, and while he had been reluctant to uproot them from all that they had known—from this place that had been their home since the beginning—he also had known, without any doubt, that he would not risk Wonder’s safety, or that of their children that still lingered close. He would not be afraid to fight, but he was afraid of losing her, or any of them, and he was not willing to find out what kind of retaliation any kind of rebellion might bring against them.
The kings and queens could play their games—they all lost in the end, anyway, though they never seemed to realize that.
While the Cove had been a suitable sanctuary, he could not deny the relief he had felt at being able to return to Tephra. She was his home, that much he is certain, but the volcanic kingdom would always have a sentimental feel to it; it would always be the place where they had first taken root, where so much of everything he had been had been dismantled and rebuilt around her. The new king and queen seemed tamer than the previous monarch—the queen a younger half-sister that he did not know well, since he has never been much for sibling affection—and they left their residents to their own devices, which is all he cared about.
Standing now on a familiar shoreline with the sun sitting lower in the sky, he finds that he is once again struggling to accept the contentment that longs to settle in his bones. Just as having to leave Tephra had felt like being awoken from dream, returning felt like trying to fall asleep and expecting that same dream to start where it had left off. He cannot help but to wonder if she had realized she would be happier elsewhere, if perhaps this life here in Tephra with him is not what she wants. It is an insecurity that he would never voice, because he knows it isn’t true; knows that it would be impossible for her antlers to be marked on his chest just as his wings are on hers if their hearts were not still intertwined.
He reaches over to brush his nose against her mane, his gray lips gently touching one of the flowers tangled in her hair. “Are you happy to be home?” he asks her, the shadows of insecurity and doubt hidden by the low gravel of his voice, searching her sea-green eyes carefully as if he might find a secret truth there.
— and I'll make you remember my face —
@wonder