He calls her love, and she is comet, beautiful and burning, trapped on a path of brilliant destruction. For a moment the world shrinks to just them, to a night in a cave with his lips on her skin, her heart in his hands. She wants to cling to it like it is still something safe, still something she can rely on, still something she can put all her trust into. But she knows better, knows that it is nothing more than a reflex that makes her chest feel heavy and dark with aching, with wondering what could have been. It’s just a word, just a weapon, just a blade he doesn’t mean to lay across her heart like this.
But even as she tries to wall herself off from it, to protect what little of herself that hasn’t already been destroyed, she finds she cannot. It is still too easy (and hard, so hard) to love him, too many years of missing him and searching for him, of trying to piece those broken memories back together until she was finally able understand the depth of what she had lost. Of what they had lost. The love had always been there, hints of it in her heart, in her skin, in the way her light always left to find him, guide him, guard him. It had survived in her even when the memories had not, when they had not.
It’s good that he pulls back from her, else she would have pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth, to that soft place where night gathers on his skin in impossible, shining galaxies. She would not have been strong enough to pretend apathy, not even for him, not in that moment, not when he uses that word against her.
Not even to protect his heart in a way hers had not been.
Love.
Their boy is a welcome distraction, a balm against the wound in her throbbing chest as she watches him climb to his feet with all the stubborn determination of his beautiful father. She smiles, eyes bright, then swallows a gasp when he tumbles back down again. It is reflex to catch him, throw a soft net of twilight out to slow the fall, soften the landing on such soft, new bones. She knows she doesn’t need to, knows he will do just fine without her intervention, but it is impossible not to reach for him, not to try and keep him safe. He rises, bucks - and she laughs something soft and light, feeling a pressure in her heart ease for the first time in so long. It doesn’t even fade when he falls for a second time and she casts her net to catch him again, soften the landing.
He pauses to look over to where his father and sister stand together, the filly leaned into Dovev on wobbly, unsure legs, and Luster turns too with such soft affection bare on her face. In this moment, the only piece missing is her beautiful boy, her Merry, and it is so easy to pretend that this is her family. That they are what she had always wanted. Together, whole. Like her parents. But it is a lie that burns her, a lie brighter than the sun and she must look away or be blinded by it.
There is no together, no family.
There is only this beautiful, accidental mess.
“Come here, beautiful.” She murmurs softly to the boy, his fire and fight so strong that it drags a smile back to her lips again. He is so much like his father, so much of what she loves in that dark and bone man. The boy finds his place beside her, nosing in along her thigh until his lips discover her teat and latch on so greedy. The sensation is new and unfamiliar, beautiful, intimate in a way she cannot name but makes her heart feel fuller in her chest.
Though Merry was her first, she had never nursed him, never experienced this kind of a moment before. She surrenders to it, lets go of all that hurt and ache and confusion, all the pain that clings quietly to her like a second shadow, that quiet dread of watching Dovev leave in such a short while to return to his family, his children with her sister. She forces it back, forces it to wait and not taint this moment. Let it come later once he has left her again and the children sleep curled against the warmth of her belly.
Her eyes find the filly where she steadies herself against her father, and she recognizes the look of soft worry in those dark eyes, the hesitance in the way she stretches only as far as she can reach without leaving his side. She nearly reaches out to her, wraps her up so safe in shadow to draw her nearer, but maybe it is a moment not meant for her. Maybe it is just for them, for a father and his girl. So though she calls to her gently, she leaves the rest to Dovev, using her twilight instead to brush quiet fingers of light through the strands of his wild mane.
