freedom hangs like heaven; etro

[etro]

etro --

in the hushing dusk, under a swollen silver moon,
I came walking with the wind to watch the cactus bloom

Love is both an intimately known and foreign concept to the mare. She feels it in her breast, and she has watched it from afar when her parents had cradled against one another. She knew what they had was love: powerful, fierce, all-encompassing love. The kind of love that was to be eventually written into the stars for everyone to stare upon and sigh heavily, wishing for that kind of magic to touch their lives just once.

Etro had felt love before, but it had not felt like that. Her love was alien in her chest. It was the love of a flat-eyed boy who she had, with age, learned smelled like death. It was the love of a land that did not love her back. It was the love of the broken and bereaved. Her love was a twisted thing in her chest, and it was just enough to cause her to question it, to look up on it with uncertainty. Could that possibly be love?

She feels that uncertainty in her chest now, leaning against him. She feels it when her mouth lingers on his neck, and she draws away just slightly, mouth folding into a frown, muddy lips pressing together. “I think you are magic,” she says quietly, feeling almost ashamed for how childish the statement sounded when left alone in the open air. She cannot bring herself to look him in the eye. “Doesn’t that count?”

-- vanquish and yael's forgotten trait-negating princess --

uh, your words are never lackluster. ever.