divine places to die in; jenger-pony

[exist]

while collecting the stars, I connected the dots.
I don’t know who I am, but now I know who I’m not.

She does not see the monster in those eyes, the hungering beast that is so enraged by her soft and her sweet and the quiet way she cannot pull her eyes from his dark face. Or if she does, she mistakes it for shadow, for some shade of brokenness that she wants to soothe away. It is worse when he turns his face from her, worse because it feels like burrs in her chest and only his eyes can soothe the points back down. She does reach out to touch him again, forgets the bared teeth and the sneer, forgets that he does not want this because is greedy and she is stubborn and she does not like the way he makes her ache inside.

Her mouth is soft against his neck, a question this time, laced with an uncertainty that is so rarely reflected in that beautiful copper and blue face. “Mandan?” She asks, she wills him back to her, wishes he was not so insistent on pushing her away. She sighs and her nose drops to his shoulder, her breath light and warm in the crook of deep mahogany skin. Her lids close over her eyes, pale emeralds returned to their graves, and she focuses instead on the magic curling in her belly. “Mandan.” She says again, a whisper and she is breathless, tremulous. Inhaling sharply she pushes the magic towards him, a tendril of curling, coiling blue light that settles and dissipates across his skin, seeping in to kiss the broken places – the bruises and the aches and the things she cannot see. When she opens her eyes it is because the magic has returned to its sleeping place in her belly, it is because he is healed in the only way she can reach him.

Not his eyes though, not those quiet shadows.
Not his heart either, but she is not done trying.

When he turns back to look at her and there is only harshness in his expression, gruff barbs in his voice, she merely flicks her ears at him, uncertain. “I think maybe I saw something that you’ve forgotten how to recognize.” She tells him at last, soft, aching to reach out and erase the tension from his face with lips that are warm and gentle and the color of buried gems. But she holds back at it makes her chest ache, makes her skin tremble because is not used to being denied this closeness she has always known, even before she took that first breath. Then, softly, touching those tremulous lips to the curve of his jaw before dropping her chin again because this indecision is ruinous, “But it’s okay if he doesn’t exist, I like this man, too.”

Her brow furrows, deep enough to crease that beautiful copper face, and this time it is her turn to shift away from him. She means to hide that treacherous ache from him, that vulnerability that slips across her face so that he might notice and stop forcing her away. But she doesn’t want him to notice, doesn’t want him to bear the burden of the quiet affection she feels gathering like warm coals in the hollow of her chest.

She is surprised, though, when he asks her to show him Tephra, her almost-home of light and dark and fire stars. It is enough to tug her eyes back to him, like a hand beneath her chin. “Now?” She asks, surprised, but she recovers quickly and speaks again before he has a chance to change his mind and tell her no. “It’s this way.” She amends instead, touching her lips to his jaw before turning to lead him back through the trees, looking for where the trunks began to thin to indicate the edge of the forest. They cross the meadow next, and when they reach the shoreline she turns again to touch his neck, though this time there is a smile on her mouth, light and eager, “How do you feel about swimming, Mandan?” A pause and she turns from him to look out past the ocean, those pale eyes settling instead on the ripple of land in the distance, hazy and dark in the fading light. “I’ll admit, it’s been a while for me,” she lifts her chin at him to catch those dark eyes, “I usually just fly.” She unfurls her wings pointedly, and they are soft and sleek, tawny and copper and gold and the feather tips brush delicately across the deep mahogany of his gleaming skin.

Exist