your mouth is poison; your mouth is wine
(you think your dreams are the same as mine)
As he talks, Adaline makes her way back toward his side, breaking the bubble that had opened up between them to place her cheek against his shoulder. It sounded so lovely, the idea of a tree that could protect everything around it, and her heart broke when she learned that the magic of it had slipped away, the idea of something so majestic being bled of its wonder enough to make her bones ache.
“That is both wonderful and terrible all at once,” she sighs when he is done speaking, and she looks up from beneath her forelock to the twisting, knotted limbs of the tree. “Perhaps you should eat some of the fruit, Ledger,” she teases, feeling more confident by his side than she had in a long time. “Then I could ask you all kinds of questions.” Her pulse quickens and she closes her eyes, feeling dizzy with his closeness; she had never been this close to another with the exception of her brother.
This was different. Similar and yet entirely different.
“Like what you are actually thinking beneath those sad eyes,” she pulls away slightly so that she can look him in the eyes, her breath catching, “and what you actually think about me.” She is taken back to that first look of disgust and her heart wrenches, but she ignores it. Perhaps he could look past that. Perhaps he could manage to not see the horror of her and see something else—something even she couldn’t see.
But then he suggest she stay and the world tilts below her, both fear and hope blossoming in her chest. “I could?” she asks tentatively, looking around them to where the land glowed with the sunshine. It seemed like an impossible dream that she would be able to call this home. Seemed impossible that she could be happy.