hold on, this will hurt more than anything has before; oksana

[Oksana]

you taught me the courage of the stars before you left

how light carries on endlessly, even after death

She had left Isle and Wyck with their father for a while, taking some time to stretch her wings beneath the sun, to feel only the sky on her skin, only the clouds on her back. It felt important to give them these moments, moments made more effortless by the ease with which all three could communicate – two mind readers and her beautiful, wordless wonder. There were no barriers between them, no room, no need for guessing and exaggerated gestures. It wasn’t that she felt out of place with them- no, their family was strange and unconventional, but everyone fit, everyone belonged, and there was a balance she had always craved. But she felt like she slowed Wyck down sometimes, like  maybe she missed the little details, the difficult-to-follow enthusiasms of a small child with no words, but one of the loudest voices she’d ever known. It felt like giving him a voice again, not that he seemed to mind, but she was a selfish beast, she always had been.

Her wings tucked close to her sides and suddenly she was hurtling through the bright blue like a red comet, falling, falling, until at the last moment they flung wide and red, all leather and sinew, and her hooves met the crush of soft spring ground with little resistance. Hardly a second had passed and her skin prickled like she was being watched.

She knew instantly, how could she not.

Her wings shrink and tuck against her sides and over her back just a second before his mouth crashes against her neck. She doesn’t push him away though, and she knows she should, it’s like an instinct, like the way lungs scream for air when they’re sunk like ships at the bottom of the ocean. But she needs the moment as much as he does, craves the heat that flares in her veins and the adrenaline that burns away in her chest. At least she isn’t surprised when he pulls away, isn’t reduced to rubble when he tears away another piece of her foolish heart.

“Don’t tell me no.” She warns him with a frown, eyes shadowed and emerald beneath a furrowing brow. She is quiet for a moment and her expression deepens, those eyes hardening as they trace the valleys between his ribs, the hollowness of his dying face. “They’re with their father.” She says at last, and though her face remains unchanged, her heart flinches in her chest. It isn’t regret though, not even a hint of it, just sorrow as the fissures between them widen further. He coughs and she flinches again at the way his lungs rattle like dead leaves on brittle branches.

“It isn’t enough to break my heart, then?” She says quietly, those emerald eyes fixed on his. She makes no effort to move closer, even despite the way she aches to fill those valleys with kisses. “It isn’t enough to send me away. You needed to let me see you like this?” Her heart explodes a thousand times over again in her chest and she can hardly look at him, can feel her jaw tremble with tension at the way she forces it to be still even as she’s falling apart. “I’m not good enough to love you, but I’m good enough to watch you die?”

She can’t help it, she turns her face from him then, hides the hurt and the disgust and the anguish that paints itself like the truth over her delicate chestnut face. His words bury themselves likes hooks beneath her skin and she turns back to him, not entirely composed but also no longer falling apart by the weight of their sheer proximity. “It didn’t take me long to what, Makai?” She says in a voice that is dangerously quiet, dangerously low.

oksana