some ancient call that I've answered before; birthing

[sochi]

there are wolves in my head and their howling
there was a garden of evil in the palm of my hand

She was never a thing to be owned—to be kept, to be possessed.

She is wild storms and raging oceans and predatory drive, but she quiets around him, stills when he is near and does not feel the familiar need to leave, to run. Perhaps it is the feeling of like being around like, of being near a soul that is at once intimately familiar in its similarity and wholly mysterious. She does not know what lives beneath his skin, cannot tell the monster that erupts from him when given the chance, but perhaps, in time, she will. Perhaps her first hint will be the scales of her daughter, or the fire that will soon find its way to her tongue, or perhaps Castile will show her himself one day.

It is difficult to say.

Still, she appreciates the way he looks at her, looks at their daughter, and she wonders if this is what most women feel when they stand near the sire of their children. What would it be like to have a family? What would it be like to have a feeling of being rooted? Of being a great oak that sprouts in the forest, knowing that its roots can go deep and far without fear? She shakes the thoughts from her head, lets them float like mist into the wind. She is not meant for such things, not meant for such tenderness.

He dismisses her advice after nodding and she nods in return, letting it die.

She knew what it meant to be proud. To lift one’s chin in the face of certain death and she does not begrudge him his own rebellious refusal to bend the knee to his disease. Neither does she fear for him. Whatever he is, he is not weak, and he would not fall beneath the weight of the plague.

Her attention is caught by the daughter before her and she bends down so that Reia can reach her. She doesn’t look at Castile to note whatever he may feel about the role she has played in all of this. She doesn’t expect him to understand, but there is something that nags in the back of her mind, something that tells her he just may. When he finally speaks, she shrugs and then nods, letting the conversation continue with so much said between them without needing to add the unnecessary words to carry it along.

When he touches her, closing the distance between them, she ignores the twinge of her heart, her face carefully passive. “It did,” she says simply. “I don’t know who I am anymore.” Another faint frown as she looks down, the sight of her daughter softening her features. Her mouth remains somber when she finds his eyes again, holding onto it. “I feel an anger that I never felt growing up—a hunger that is becoming more difficult to suppress, more difficult to sate.” She sighs, shaking her head, letting him see a rare conflict within her, a confusion as she tries to pull apart the pieces of her to understand them better.

now I'm broken and bleeding, I’ll never find my way

S

OCHI

stranger in this land

@[Castile]

i love them together so much :|