09-04-2018, 11:41 PM
our demons are all around us and they don't come from hell
every single one of them reminds us of ourselves
every single one of them reminds us of ourselves
She calms beneath his touch, the wild edges of her unrest settling, the tendrils of her unrooted soul finding root in the fabric of him. He has always done this. He is a steady presence—a calming force. Shadows had always chased him, had always spread far and wide in his wake, but she has never known anything but peace next to him. Even when they stood with sin on their shoulders and blood on their hands, she has found peace—resting with him first as peer and then friend and now, impossibly, as something more.
As everything.
Still, it teases out the barest hint of a smile on her forever stern face—something that softens the rough edges of her, making her plain face almost feminine, almost beautiful. “I’m not going anywhere,” she murmurs before a husky laugh follows with a shrug of her scarred shoulders. “At least not for now.”
Because she couldn’t promise that she wouldn’t slip away again.
She couldn’t promise that the call of the borders and what lay beyond wouldn’t tempt her again.
Without the Amazons to root her, she felt listless, unsettled, unsure. It was only in the here and now with her shoulder against him and his mouth on her neck that anything made sense—that she felt like she still belonged and like she wasn’t a relic of a land long ago swallowed by the heavens.
Still, her mind wanders and she glances up, searching his face.
“How is our son?” she asks, knowing that the graces of motherhood have mostly escaped her. She cares for her hellhound of a son; she cares about him as much as she possibly can, but she was never made for the soft, sweet moments of motherhood. She was not anchored by the idea of nurturing him, and she was grateful that her and Rodrik had not created a soul that needed to be coddled.
Still, whatever is maternal within her, longs to hear that he is safe—that he is well.