etro --
in the hushing dusk, under a swollen silver moon,
I came walking with the wind to watch the cactus bloom
His words should cause her soul to crumble. They should cause her to thrash in agony, coming apart at the cruelty, breaking beneath his heel. She is but a silly girl, after all, and her heart beats for him—it beats for him and he has discarded it, he has tossed it to the side, so callously shrugging off her offering.
And there is a part of her that recoils from it, shuddering within her, seeking shelter from the hard edges of the monster that she has always loved. There is part of her that nearly turns and runs, turning on her haunches and racing toward a skyline where nothing awaits her—no family, no home, no love.
But, she has never been ordinary and she doesn’t respond normally. She doesn’t flinch and no tears stream down her cheeks. Instead, she laughs, the sound silver bells—rippling as it escapes her mouth and swells in the space between them. She shakes her head with mirth, plain lips upturned into a hint of a smile.
“Of course you have,” is all she says, because she has seen the way that their souls have collided, she has seen the explosion that it detonated, the constellations burning between them. She watched it in the Deserts and in the meadow and she watches it now. She has always known the truth of it, and regardless of the space and time that stretches between the detonations, she recognizes the purity of it.
She doesn’t fear the fire and the fire of him.
She doesn’t tremble before the icy indifference.
She sees straight to the core of it, and she looks there now, her plain muddy eyes piercing him as she watches, her gaze both sharp and loose, a casual hand keeping control of the conversation. “You can’t lie to me, Kingslay,” her voice is softer now and for a moment, she almost takes a step toward him, forcing him to live within her immediate proximity, but she doesn’t. She lets him have his space.
“I’ve wanted you,” she confesses, although it doesn’t feel like a confession when it is so obvious. “I have always wanted you.” She laughs again, shaking her head and looking upward to the heavens that reel as they look down on them. “I remember when we first met,” the memory causes an ache to spread in her. “I would have sacrificed everything for you—right then and there. My family. My home. My birthright.”
It didn’t matter that she was to be a princess.
It didn’t matter that she was part of a loving home, the powerful kingdom spread out before her.
None of it had mattered from the second he had stepped into her life.
“I loved you immediately,” another truth, almost casually handed to him.
"I suppose I will always love you."
Let him do with that what he will. Let him live with it.
-- vanquish and yael's trait-negating desert princess --
@[Kingslay]