She forgets herself sometimes, forgets that touch is not something everyone is so used to giving so freely of. Makai had not seemed to mind her embraces, or when they crashed together chasing the jungle cats in the earliest memories of her childhood. He had never resented her touch, even when it was something that seemed stiffer in him. Or maybe that stiffness was normal, the way he reserved his hugs for important moments, for his daughter and her mother. Maybe it was because Oksana was so quick to pull her daughter close, to brush her nose against Malis’ cheek, her lips across her plain brown back, that Makai seemed more reserved. She had resented the embarrassment she felt at being coddled so often by her mother, but somewhere along the way that very same trait had buried itself within Malis’ DNA.
And when Erebor, crushed against Malis’ bright indigo chest, responds by pulling her closer with the heat of his breath chasing shivers down the length of her spine, she finds she no longer minds. She does not pull away, even despite the sense of vulnerability that buries its gnashing teeth in the soft of her throat. There’s something strange, something she does not recognize (and, oh, how that scares her) growing like a planted seed in the pit of her stomach. It makes her feel uneasy, suddenly unsure, but the feeling is not entirely bad.
But then he speaks and his words fall like a wedge between them. She pulls away and there is agony in the reluctance etched into the shadow of her black and indigo face. “Is it?” She whispers and it’s hard to know which trembles more, her voice or the heart betraying her within her chest. “Is it easier together?” She looks away for a moment, desperately trying to knit back together the fraying pieces of a darkening expression. She ignores the way together had caught like a burr on her tongue before she managed to spit it out.
“If it’s just me, just me, I can believe that I’m insane. Because nightmares aren’t real, they don’t exist, and neither do little girls with plastic toys and toy boxes like prisons.” And when she looks back at him it feels like there’s a hand plunged into her chest, struggling to rip out the beating heart trapped there. “But I don’t think you’re crazy. I don’t think you’re a liar. And if you’re right, and your memories are as they are, then so must mine also be.” Her jaw clenches and unclenches with worry, a worry that bleeds shadow into the raw, aching green of those bright eyes.
He speaks again and she can practically taste the indecision that bleeds from his words. But she does not think him crazy, does not recoil at an offer that should seem so dangerous, so ridiculous. Instead she can feel something in her chest, a dangerous flicker of hope struggling beneath the ash and rubble. “Do it.” She tells him quietly, urgently, her mouth stretching out to touch his cheek before falling away again. She has not an ounce of concern for the fact that he intends to burn away a part of her, not even a shadow of indecision as those bright eyes catch and hold his gaze. “Please.”
MALIS
makai x oksana