tell me you love me just one more time; viscera

[leliana]

I know what it is but I'm hoping that all is well
no harvest of green but it's still my heart to sell

If daydreaming was foolish, then Leliana was the Queen of fools. She spent hours on the subject matter, her mind drifting upward and outward in thought, chasing after spiderweb dreams, hours lingering over the impossibility of them, the fragility that left them caught on fingers and then gone without a trace. It was something she held close to her chest; a silly pastime for an otherwise practical, grounded girl.

Still, she had enough of a mind about her to blush against the confirmation, head dipping slightly.

She caught the widening of the girl’s eyes at the shifting of her wings, and her heart warmed slightly. It was one of her more frivolous bits of magic, but useful in its own right. She conjured dragon wings when she needed to fly great distances for they rarely tired. Down when she needed to sleep. And when that stallion had charged her, they had shifted into something steely and dangerous. Her heart clenched at the memory, and she turned from it, forcing it to the wayside as she focused in time to catch the girl’s name.

“Viscera,” she repeated, enjoying the sound and weight on her tongue. It was a good name, and she found she liked the way it felt as she rolled it around in her mouth. “Viscera,” one more time as she caught the other’s gaze and held it steady. At her comment, Leliana unfurls the wings and stretches them wide, the coppery feathers catching the rays of light. “It was a gift passed down to my sister and me from our mother, and gift she in turn received from her grandmother.” The wings without singular shape.

At her thoughts, the wings grew fuzzy on the edges, shifting first into the hard copper that had protected on that fateful day, the edges sharp and glinting. They stayed like that for a moment before they turned into the dragonfly wings she had seen her sister wear, iridescent and nearly-translucent, the veins spidering through them. Then, before she could stop them, they turned into the black leather, spattered with the faint colors of constellations, the ivory of the bone sticking out.

Something rippled across her expression, pain perhaps, that she smoothed over, the wings turning into those of a barn owl, russet and cream as she pulled them back. She gave the other girl a soft smile. “A neat party trick,” she rolled her dappled shoulders, wishing she had not put on such a bold display.

I put everything I had into something that didn't grow
like going on a wild hunt, shooting arrows without a bow