03-03-2022, 01:22 PM
Amet
There has never been any doubt in Amet’s mind that his love for Ciri was unmatched, incomparable to anything else he had ever felt in his lifetime. Even in the hazy years he’d spent away from Beqanna, living a life that felt more like someone else’s than his own, there had only ever been placeholders. He just hadn’t thought of them that way until now ─ with Ciri before him, those same swirling silver eyes. That same anger that sets them ablaze. He had cared for them (Eione, Jah-Lilah). Had loved them, even. But there is no doubt.
He doesn’t dare to break the connection between his sepia eyes and her gunmetal ones, but in his peripherals he can see the white scar that cuts across her face and the others that dot what areas of her chest he can see beyond her feathered starlight wings. He remembers her scars, could trace them with the softness of his muzzle in his sleep, but not these. There are more now. Too many. And despite what had torn the two of them apart, the actions and distance and years, there is an instinctual rage that curls in Amet’s stomach at whoever ─ or whatever ─ could have brought the star-wielder harm.
He repeats her name in that gruff whisper and he loses the gift of those silvered eyes. She hides them beneath tight eyelids and he nearly panics, assaulted with the fear that he may never see them again. How strange, to live without someone for so long and to survive ─ only to feel that death may be on the doorstep or around the next corner should they disappear once more. He wills himself to breathe, his armored chest heaving, as she speaks her plea ─ that singular word nearly begging him to leave. Amet is confronted with the urge to move closer, to comfort her, but his long golden legs are caught in the sand as if it is cement, hardened against his desire to reach her.
He shouldn’t infringe on her space anyway, he knows, but to see the pain in the way Ciri holds herself breaks his heart all over again.
His mouth opens again in an attempt to find the right words, but to what end? He is not prepared to talk about their past, to dig up words and actions he had spent so long burying. But there is no way to offer the star-wielder comfort if those things that hold them back are not resolved.
Gale, the emotion spilling over in her voice, and Amet’s own inner turmoil is silenced immediately. “Gale?” The question is raspy, held back by the tightness of his throat, but loud enough for her to hear regardless. Could she truly be mistaking him for someone else, calling him by the name of a lover she’d grown close to after their own ruptured ending? Anything but his face.
It takes him a moment, but finally he realizes that she thinks he is a glamored version of himself, his face on somebody else’s body. As if he is a weapon to be used against her. His frown deepens against the draconic lines of his face and he shakes his head at her pleas. “It’s me, Ciri.” He yearns to call her akmar just as he had done all those years ago, to help her realize ─ but the sentiment behind it, the memory of their shattered love, is too painful to use as proof of his existence.
You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
@Ciri
