i worshipped at the altar of losing everything )
He had always been quiet, Kensley.
But the quiet is different now.
He had once simply been content to let the world happen around him.
And now? Now the quiet comes from not knowing what to say.
Not knowing how to translate the ache at the center of him.
She ventures closer still and he feels no overwhelming need to cast himself out of her reach. Instead, his eyes drift heavy closed as she presses a firm kiss to the meat of his cheek. He wonders, briefly, distractedly, if he will begin to decay. If the place where she kisses him will someday begin to rot. If this close she can smell the death on him. Or if she can only smell the sadness. He wonders if the heart would stir in its ribbed cage if it still beat. Would the pulse flutter if the heart was not a dead and useless thing?
But he feels nothing at all, at least nothing physical. It puts a vicious ache in his throat and he sucks in a breath he does not need in an effort to quell it. It offers little relief and he closes his eyes a little harder, until they wrinkle at the corners. He grits his teeth and the muscle in his jaw pulses and he swallows down her apology.
When he opens his eyes again, she has removed herself just enough to look him in the eye. She speaks of magic, he’s sure of it, and he offers up a sad, slanted smirk. Rueful. He shakes his head then, looks beyond her to the horizon. Where the sunlight puckers and pulses. “It’s all right,” he murmurs, “I don’t know that I deserved to have it in the first place.”
In the end what had he done with it except for destroy? Even if she still had the ability to give it back to him, he would not have allowed her to.
She pushes her nose into his space and he forces his lungs to receive air, air that tastes heavy and acrid, and then he exhales and tries to find the warmth in her breath.
“I don’t know, Moselle,” he says and the sweet curl of her smile coaxes one out of him, as well, “you tell me.”
@[Moselle] i'm so sorry for the delay