11-04-2017, 03:47 PM
if there's a light at the end, it's just the sun in your eyes
He had learned in his adolescence that detachment made pain easier and more tolerable. Tears would get the young colt additional blows from Him, and reacting with anger and defiance had brought the same result. Detachment had protected him. It had protected Sakir. And so he knows no other reaction but to retreat from the smoky black mare, to guard himself from this new kind of pain and suffering. He finds words for her again, but he knows they are not what she wants to hear ─ he can't beg her to stay or tell her not to leave, as much as seeing her turn to leave will crush the remainder of his soul.
She is a wild creature. She is not someone to be possessed or owned. And his has no right to say that she is his. Then I'll go, she retorts with a bluntness that mirrors his own and, oh, how Amet's heart palpitates painfully. Jah-Lilah had offered him words of wisdom, she had quelled his worries about loving his starry-eyed akmar, but never had he thought to ask her how much it could hurt to have your heart crushed.
When finally his icy facade cracks and he is vulnerable, his heart bleeding openly, the gilded stallion doesn't expect for her to come to him. His amber eyes have closed in hopes that his tears will remain hidden behind the shield of his lids, but still they seep down his face. His shoulders quiver, heavy with the weight of his despair, but he remains otherwise still as he waits for the sound of her retreating hooves.
Her skin against his is unexpected. It draws painful breaths from him, sobs on the verge of hyperventilation, but he leans himself into her touch instead of moving away. Had her pleading voice not reminded him why they were here, the feelings that she has exposed to him, the warmth of her frame against his could have, perhaps, begun to console him, but it only serves to feel like a consolation prize. Ciri's own despair shines through her pleading words and he sinks further into self-loathing, wanting to understand her plight, wanting to accept the way that she feels. But his heart is un-moving and he cannot loosen its grasp from her enough to consider sharing her affections with Castile.
My moon, my love, her words are shaking with her own tears and he can feel the way she quivers as he presses into her touch. He wonders if it will be the last time, if the time he had spent begging her to stay with him at been for naught. If the time they had spent in their private wisteria den, in Tephra, in Sylva had been for naught.
"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," he pleads against her neck as his tear-soaked muzzle inhales another loud, ragged breath, "I'm sorry that I can't be who you want me to be," he whispers sorrowfully to his shining brilliance and then forces himself to break the contact between them, though his muzzle still hovers near hers. He does nothing now to hide his brokenness from her, there is no way to take back the vulnerability that he has lain before the silver-eyed girl, and his puffy red eyes blink more tears down his golden face.
"I can't share your affections, akmar. Just as I would not have expected you to share mine with Tang, had my childhood feelings for her not faded," he says truthfully as he takes another step away from her, trying to offer her anything other than detachment. She deserves more. She deserves his own explanation. He wonders briefly if it's his blessing that she is looking for. "If you want him..." he pauses, the words drawing hot acid through his stomach, "then I understand," Amet offers weakly, his last three words nearly choking him.
The gilded stallion's swollen eyes turn from her now and towards the River. Where she had been attacked. Where Castile had been the one to find her and nurture her. Where the son of Nayl had lain his own muzzle against Ciri, had quelled her worries and fostered passionate feelings. "I need to find who hurt you," he says after a beat, trying to compose himself once more as flashes of Castile drawing breathy exhales and molten-silver looks from Ciri run through his head.
Amet
@[Ciri]