He stirs.
She stills.
A fresh hope ignites within her – that he will fall easily into sleep’s embrace once more, that she hasn’t been an interruption, a burden. But she can’t make herself look away as his eyelids shudder like leaves in the wind. He grasps consciousness with a grace that is almost art, framed between the winter trees as he is. Lines of tension pulse through his body to remind him that he is awake, to shake off any remnants of sticky sleep from his brain. And then, he turns to her.
She forgets that she had wished him back to sleep moments ago, because this will be better. She hopes, now, that he will forgive her intrusion and stay. At least for a while. Until the earth stops going on without her, spinning and spinning away the days.
“Oh,” Vael starts again, knowing it is unwise not to finish a thought (how they will congeal at the base of your tongue until you choke on all the words you never said). “Yes. All the time.” The roughness in his voice is what finally draws her out of the woods. It is so different than her own – hollow and bright – that she wonders if he needs mending. She is no stranger to brokenness. The fragments of her memories cut her like shattered glass if she tries to hold onto them too long. But her heart glows stronger than her skin in spite of it, or maybe because of it. Brokenness builds her, spurs her. She will heal the world, someday, she knows it.
“I have no one to wander with,” she says as he shakes the debris from his black hide, darkening himself further. It is not meant as a regret or an invitation, it simply is. I am not meant to be alone, but I am. And she has been. But the stallion’s company reminds her there is another way. His smile reminds her, too, what she’s been missing.
As she watches him, Vael realizes that it isn’t brokenness that ails him. It is only difference that stretches like a yawning canyon between them. She wants to study it. She wants to know why he is in constant motion while she is always stilled, like a corpse. She wants to measure the confidence of a man who wakes softly and assured with a stranger shielded in the shadows. The girl like a gilded star does not fear him, either, and she laughs at the notion. “Your teeth do not scare me, Alek. Your story, your emotions, your intentions – those might. Though I doubt it.” She takes another step and the vines brush roughly against her hips. “My name is Vael.” And then, as an afterthought and with a smile, she lies for the first time. “I’m sorry for waking you.”
Vael
and I swear I'm not a pretender