so long, my luckless romance; any

[leliana]

I know what it is but I'm hoping that all is well
no harvest of green but it's still my heart to sell

The suddenness of him surprises her, although perhaps it should not.

Perhaps it is but the quickening of her blood at the nearness of someone else, the feel of heat rising up and reaching for her, the healing in her bones picking up on the unique fingerprint of his pulse as it loops lazily through his veins and throughout his body. Something within her startles and retreats, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at her. You wouldn’t see the fear of the small shattered thing within her. You wouldn’t see the cracks that spiderweb out around her, threatening to buckle her knees with memory.

Instead, you would just see the soft smile that curves the edges of red-tinged lips, the way her hazel eyes lift and find his—everything slow and deliberate. She is not particularly beautiful, at least she has never thought of herself in such a way. She did not have the fiery beauty of Exist, unmistakable and tangible beauty that catches breath in throats, but such details never cross her mind, let alone bother her.

She is still for a moment, trapped between the pauses between his words and caught in the spiderweb of his gaze, floating languidly. There is something beneath the deep waters of his eyes that gives her pause, something that pulls at her belly, a reminder of something she has never known. “Hello,” her voice is honey and summer, lyrical and lifting on the edges—the only truly beautiful thing about her. She tilts her head to the side, considering him, the frayed edges that she had somehow missed the first time.

“My name is Leliana,” she offers and wonders why it feels so foreign on her tongue.

Until she remembers that it has been years until she has had to provide it.

It has been years since she truly introduced herself.

For a moment, the ghosts break through the veil, and she can feel their sickly fingers pressing into the base of her throat, the pain rising like a wave inside of her—threatening to pull her down. She rolls her shoulders, doing her best to shake them and focus on the man in front of her instead. The edges of her wings flicker, the red down shifting imperceptibly until they take on the spotted cream and ivory of his coat. They linger on the color palette for a moment before they shift back to the sunset red.

Other words nearly form, but they die quickly—escaping her mouth in a soft exhale.

This wasn’t meant to be this difficult.

I put everything I had into something that didn't grow
like going on a wild hunt, shooting arrows without a bow