so we let our shadows fall away like dust
She does not realize the wrongness until he starts to back from her, falling away from the pull of her gravity and to the relief of his deep, murky waters. There is so much uncertainty in her face when she watches him go, deep furrows of worry that appear like slashes of shadow in the smoothness of blue cheeks. “Stillwater?” She says, she asks, she wills him back – would’ve named the one with silver eyes, too, if she had any idea what to call him. There are many moments that pass, too many moments, and each one pulls them further apart before she finally notices the wariness in his eyes when they drop to the shadows roiling at her heels.
They are gone in an instant, released from her and into the air, the sand, into the nothingness they came from. For a long while she can say nothing, cannot even find the will to lift her eyes from her feet to look at him again. Instead she is trapped in the shapes crushed and etched into the wet sand, the half crescent of hooves, the furrows where she had lain pinned willingly beneath him.
When her face does lift and her eyes find his, they are sad and sorry and so soft, once more belonging to that starshine girl he had curled beside that first night in the cave. “I’m sorry.” She says, a whisper, so tremulous when it takes flight from those pale, perfect lips to settle in the curve of his dark, uncertain ears. “I will never use that against you.” But that wasn’t true, was it. She had already used it like a mask over his eyes, taking from him simply because she could. The shame overwhelms her, a pit of sad that blisters in the quiet of her belly, scalds her throat with apologies that she swallows back down. “Never again.” She corrects herself quietly, wincing and soft.
She should leave now, let him be. Deepwater or silver, she didn’t think it mattered. She had carved herself into a weapon against both. She should let him slip back and away from her to those depths where she couldn’t reach him.
Yet –
He doesn’t disappear like she expects him to, like he should. Instead he stops when the water reaches his chest, laps around the smooth edges of strong, dark shoulders. It is the only invitation she needs, though she doubts he meant it as such, and suddenly she is crossing the shore and wading into the water so she can run gentle lips across his mouth and his face, brush her nose along the underside of his jaw to duck beneath his neck and curl against the warmth of his wet chest. “Stillwater.” She breathes against him, an almost whimper of longing when she grazes her teeth across his neck and his shoulder, twisting to touch quiet lips that are only soft, only sweet to the plains of his dark face.
It doesn’t matter that these eyes are silver and not deepwater, doesn’t matter that they are the eyes of a predator fascinated with his prey, because she remembers now what she had forgotten before. What lust had burned from her chest in the wake of being held beneath him, of caving to the wild instinct of a body that ached for him. “I’m yours.” She says again, reminds him, reminds her, presses quiet kisses along the curve of his jaw and the soft of his mouth. “All of you.” All at once she is soft again, silver and starshine, wide-eyed and beautiful pressed to the curve of his chest, to the beating of his heart.
