hold my hand, it's a long way down to the bottom of the river
Heat flushes her skin when he stops so quickly to look at her, and flushes deeper still when she can feel his eyes tracing the curve of her very swollen belly. She wants to look away in that moment, to let uncertainty pull those dark, secretive eyes from his face. But something steadies her. Suddenly she wants to see what flickers across his face in this moment, suddenly she needs to know the truth in case he hides it from her as she had hid it from him for so long. But all she can see is the absence of disappointment, and the relief she feels is immediate. He pulls her to him as he has so many times before and she covers his skin with kisses, traces his scars with the pale-bright of her delicate mouth. I love you, she tells him with each touch, though she does not say it aloud, not yet, not now, I love you, I love you, I love you.
In this sudden closeness after so much time apart she can feel a pain in her chest so keenly. It abates only when she can taste the dust on his skin, only when she can drown in the sound of his heart beating beneath the array of scars on his pitch black skin. In this closeness she wonders how she had ever lasted so many days without him, how she had not run to hide from the pain swelling violently in her chest. She sighed shakily, feeling suddenly fragile in the immensity of his shadow, and pressed her cheek against his shoulder for as long as he would let her. It felt strangely like filling up on moments so that she would have them during the lonely times, the absent times. But never once did she resent him for taking such good care of his kingdom, his brotherhood.
Suddenly though, and like a pit of dread opening in her chest, she thinks she can feel him stiffen beside her. But it is so subtle, so restrained that she wonders if she imagined it. What she does not realize is that he is remembering. Remembering lives and lifetimes long since gone, years and even decades turned to dust. So much time that she did not even know existed, burdens he had carried for a century, burdens she would carry with him if only she knew. Instead she pulls away just a little, gently disentangling herself from his neck with which he held her close against his body. She wondered fleetingly if he knew how much she loved it when he did that, how much it felt like home crushed up against the thrumming of his heart.
Her chest expands with the words she is about to speak, but he steps closer and she is immediately silenced. His lips find her shoulder first and then he is touching her belly and she is certain her heart is going to burst within her chest. He nuzzles the swollenness and nudges it, and she cannot be certain that she didn’t just imagine it, but she thinks the child might’ve moved beneath his lips. Her face is radiant when she turns to look back at him, and for once there is no guardedness to greet him. Only open affection as she reaches over to nibble at the thick hairs at his shoulder, using her teeth to curry away the loose coat. And then with that same, soft smile stretched over the tremulous pink of her whiskered mouth, “You’ve been busy, love.”
But it becomes quickly apparent that he is distressed over not noticing sooner and she slips close to him again as if to soothe him. “The Tundra comes first, or you would have no right to call yourself King, Offspring. Don’t ever feel regret over being a diligent leader.” She pauses to nuzzle the soft skin on his belly right behind the elbow of his foreleg. “I wouldn’t have stayed if I was unwilling to share you.” A smile traces across her mouth and she pauses to close her eyes and rest her cheek against his ribs, sighing. But then he twists and they readjust so that his mouth is beside her small ear and she flicks it to catch his quiet words. Stunning, he says, and oh how she must glow bright enough to put the sun to shame. He pulls her tight to his chest again and she curls there readily, melting languidly into the curve of his neck where he held her close. “Yes,” she murmurs, and then laughs quietly, her face upturned to catch the crimson of his gaze, “I am definitely, really pregnant.”
And then before she can stop herself, “and happy, Offspring. I’m so happy. I've wanted a family for so long.” Her mouth returned to the curve of his chest, tracing hard bone and sinew, tasting the sound of his heart where it beat within his chest. She paused, breathing heavily, and then rested her face tiredly against his neck. When she spoke again her voice was small and murmurous, as honest as she’d ever been. “I’m scared too, though. Scared I won’t know how to be a good mother.”
Isle
