[private] When did the colors fill in the spaces where there were none?

[Fyr]

I'll settle for the ghost of you.

Emotions are not something he can sense, not like his golden mother can. Her inner battle is hers alone and so he tells her what she asks, unaware of the jealousy that spreads like his wildfire within her. There is no bite in his words, one that might have been there if she had expressed her envy. Was the family she missed so dearly worth the price of power? If they had spurned her for simply being what she was… Would she still desire it so badly?

Regardless, the moment does not come. Instead, she presses herself further into him and for a minute he glances down at her, the flames of his uncertainty now spiraling before her from smoldering petals instead of his spine. He braces himself to find pity in her gaze but she looks out to his sea of burning flowers and in the reflection he catches from the corner of her flickering eye… He is relived to see none.

Instead, she voices the thing that has been eating him alive since he had reached the mainland from the Isle. She’s right. They should have found them by now. Swallowing hard, he thinks of how there is one way to find out for sure. That constant buildup in his head, those souls begging to be heard. While some might be able to ignore certain powers, like the angel of Hyaline, this seems something he cannot turn off. No matter how hard he tries to build up the wall, the plaster flakes and the souls refuse to be cast aside.

He can’t do it. He can’t face them, not even for her. Instead, his muzzle tucks beneath her cheek to bring her golden eyes to him. His own flickering yellow ones searching the delicate planes of her face and wanting nothing more in that moment then to take all of her worry for himself. “Maybe we never will.” He finally says, slowly and quietly. It's not something that makes him happy, that thought, but his expression softens slightly despite the harshness of reality.  “I’m glad to have at least found you Lillibet.” A hesitant smile spreads across his lips as the fire dies before her and finds its usual home along his spine. 

FYR

Photo by Little Willow Art

@Lillibet