etro --
in the hushing dusk, under a swollen silver moon,
I came walking with the wind to watch the cactus bloom
She would do anything to stop this pain ripping through her chest. She would do anything to quiet the demons screaming in her head. She was made for this, but not this; she is not equipped to handle the way her heart is beating—so fast, so hard, so loud. She is not equipped to handle the way that she is gasping for air or the way that the earth is shifting, revolving, falling from beneath her. Her reality is being torn asunder, and she is gasping, and he is there, but she can’t touch him—and it’s too much.
All of it is too much.
But then he speaks, and she wants to cry from the relief, from the glorious, beautiful pain the blossoms in her chest, bruising her ribs with each breath. No. To what, she didn’t know, but he had spoken, and just hearing his voice—the same, clanging syllables rattling around his mouth—was enough to drive away the shadows for a second. She closes her muddy eyes and leans against the wind that stirs, and she breathes in the faint burning scent of his body, and feels the ash tangle in the curls of her matted mane.
No.
When her eyes open, there are still nebulas swirling there, the constellations of her cells a stark contrast to the plain angles of her face and the slope of her hips. “You can’t tell me no,” she says simply in her voice of sea and tides. She may not be beautiful, but she is the daughter of Yael and Vanquish. She is a princess of the dunes and a daughter of the desert moon. She may not be beautiful, but there are heavens in her DNA that can quiet the monsters and still the storms and bring magic to its knees in her presence.
She is not beautiful, but he cannot tell her no.
The pain is still washed over her features, and she smiles at him—the curves of her lips sad, wistful. “I love you, Kingslay,” not so much a confession as a truth of the world, “but you cannot tell me no.”
-- vanquish and yael's forgotten trait-negating princess --
