love comes slow and it goes so fast; nayl

[magnus]

She is everything he had remembered Amazonian Queens begins—fierce, steely—and he finds that comforting, even though he imagines her enemies do not. She was something to behold as she walked up to him and he flicked an ear toward her, his gold-flecked eyes appraising her as she approached. It had not taken her long to find him, and he is grateful for that, his scarred mouth rising into a lopsided smile.

“Nayl,” even her name felt Amazonian in his mouth and the nostalgia twisted in his gut, memories of growing up amongst the trees and the vines. Memories of his mother’s jaguar pacing by his side, the way his mother ruled with such an iron fist. It brought a spark to his eyes as he looked at her, something alive in his belly—something that sparked and flared, dancing around the edges of his bones.

Her voice was cool but he could imagine the heat beneath it and so he didn’t cool in response, remaining that wild thing, the matted tangles of his inky hair framing his handsome face. “Indeed we do,” his voice was whiskey on his tongue, husky and rolling off his tongue. “I figured this time, I could travel to you.”

He takes a step forward, taking a moment to drink in the sight of the coast, so like and unlike the beaches of Tephra, before turning his gaze back to her, fixing her with it. “It is appropriate,” and it was. It was so very different from the jungle—open when the jungle was a dark, twisted thing—but it was also wild and tempestuous and deserving of the strong. And so he found it appropriate that they lived here.

At her prompting he took another step forward, taking his place by her side, although he did not touch her, the distance between them minimal but there. “I would very much like that,” he breathed softly, his eyes tearing away from the coast before landing on her. “Show me your favorite parts.”

A pause.

“Please.”

out of the blue out into the loneliest place that you'll ever know
I carried the world just as far as I could but the damage had taken its toll