Tangerine
In the middle of the night, I go walking in my sleep
Waves of insecurity beat against her conscious, wearing away the confidence and open-hearted bravery with which she had always faced the world. But as he comes towards her the tempest quells, somewhat, and she finds the courage to smile at his words.
His eyes search her, but he does not physically close the gap, and for this she is glad. The last time a man touched her she had been left branded, and that ever-present thought causes her fleeting smile to fade.
She didn't know how much to tell him, what to confess what to withhold. She doesn't trust her own voice, her meeting with Corvus flashes across her mind, but she dives in anyway. "You were right, to mistrust Carnage." She doesn't want to talk about it, to tell him about the lair and the branding - the sheer helplessness of being used like a toy. There is a hard lump in her throat and she doesn't want to see his face if she breaks down the way she had in front of the silver mare. So, she doesn't go on because words are her undoing. She simply shakes her head no and lets her eyes drift up the branches which shelter them. She didn't seek him out for pity, and it feels wrong to take any when others had suffered worse than she had.
The gold and creme mare stands, mute as a deer, staring at the canopy, blinking away the tears which threatened to reveal the extent of her damage. Every night it felt like the whole world was sleeping around her and she was the only one awake, wide-eyed and sleepless, every night sound exaggerated until it became a monster.
He couldn't make her ok and she would never hold that against him.
But she had to get better, she couldn't go on like this.
He wasn't the one she had almost given up on.
@[Amet]