and let me crawl inside your veins. I'll build a wall, give you a ball and chain.
The events that had transpired in Tephra almost didn’t feel real. Perhaps it was due to the haze from the shadow and smoke, and the way only lightning and fire had lit up the darkness. Everything had been disorienting. She isn’t even sure if she had actually seen Litotes and Kensa. She isn’t sure if she had actually collided with a dragon and caused it to shatter into a thousand scattered pieces. All she knows for sure is Ophanim had been hurt; his wing hanging useless, and blood streaming from a wound on his throat.
The portal had spit her back into Loess, and she still didn’t know where he was. He should have been right here; before her, or behind her.
It takes her a moment to gather her composure, her dark blue eyes flitting almost frantically. The sight of the maze had been confusing, at first, having already forgotten it was here. But the sight of it brings everything from before Tephra flooding back. Malone and Alita. She didn’t know where they were. Oxytocin had promised that Malone would be okay, but what if he was wrong? And Alita – she had made her swear to stay here, but there was a part of her that feared the girl’s headstrong nature would have brought her to the frontlines of the war.
But from the corner of her eye, there is a flicker of turquoise and gold, and she can feel her heart clench. “Alita!” The space between them disappears, reaching to pull her into an embrace against her chest. The skin on her face and her chest still stings from the dragon-fire that had blown back as a result of the explosion, but it doesn’t keep her from running her muzzle against the girl’s neck. She was still so adrenaline-charged that whatever guards she usually had in place were completely demolished, for now. Bringing Alita here had originally been a form of revenge; to come home with a physical manifestation of Ophanim’s infidelities. And even though over time she had begun to see her as a real daughter, her own personal guilt often kept her from being as open as she could be.
Now, however, she holds her close, breathing in her familiar smell and willing her erratic heartbeat to slow. “I’m so glad you’re okay,” She murmurs into her skin, her voice raspy from the smoke that had burnt her throat, and perhaps from the emotion that builds in the back of it. But she pulls away, smoothing the girl’s forelock as she asks worriedly, “Have you seen your brother? Or your father?”
starsin
it’s not like me to be so mean. you’re all I wanted.
( just let me hold you Like a hostage. )
@[alita]
