He wonders at the greedy way he touches her now. The soft and demanding—the reassuring, explorative ways that his mouth returns to her. To the slope of her shoulder, the curve of her neck, the gentle arch of her throat. He traces and touches almost without though. As if to remind himself that she is real and that she is not a figment of his lonely mind, his angry heart—that she will not disappear with pressure.
She mentions Wonder and his face becomes a clashing of emotion. He feels the familiar pull of adoration he has always felt for his sister—the protective rush at the way they had claimed one another as children. She was his other half and he was hers. They ran wild together amongst the wolves underneath the shadow of the volcano. They had not needed to read minds to know one another.
In another world (maybe this world, maybe), Kensa would meet Wonder.
They would like one another he thinks, and the smile that touches his lips is both sad and nostalgic.
“Not at all, actually,” he laughs. “She is a softer red and sports armor made of bone.” It was another gift that had no clear heritage. Neither of their parents were armored or wore wings and he wonders why he and his sister had been given such odd gifts. “Her eyes are the color of the ocean. You’ve never met any one with a kinder heart.” He laughs a little under his breath and then exhales, leaning against Kensa.
When she begins to talk about her own childhood, he perks up a little, listening intently in that fierce way of his. His light grey eyes hold onto her own and rarely blink, studying her underneath the fiery swath of his own forelock. “It sounds like a wonderful childhood,” he comments, thinking that although the details are so different from his own small, private family, the root of love and freedom was so much the same.
“Tephra is wild and vast,” he comments, his brow twitching. “I never paid much mind to anything of its formal proceedings, but Magnus was always kind when we met and it was large enough for two young souls with a penchant for running.” He looks out to the horizon, eyes distant. “We looked quite the strange pair. My father’s wolves accompanied us pretty much wherever we went, unless we were sneaky enough to outsmart them, which we rarely were.” He rolls his shoulders, ignoring the pang of loneliness.
“Perhaps one day I will return.”
He won’t, he thinks, and his heart twists with it.
Desperate to feel anything but the bite of guilt, he kisses down her face and bites lightly at the corner of her mouth. “Tell me something you haven’t told anyone before.” Another kiss. “Something just for me.”
BRIGADE
when I was a man I thought it ended when I knew love's perfect ache
but my peace has always depended on all the ashes in my wake
@[Kensa]