we're knocking knees in a traveling breeze; brigade

[irisa]

and the walls kept tumbling down
in this city that we love

He is before her, finally, and she feels something calm within her, like the release of an unknowingly held breath. She does not let herself plumb too deeply into her own emotions, and so she had not felt his absence acutely, it is only now that she realizes the depth of her gratitude for his presence, the way something in her quiets as she looks at his still-dim form, the shape of antlers and wings, the curve of his crest.
He says her name and she smiles, because she is bright and alive this autumn night. She has not yet scented the strangeness about him, the tightness, the scent that she will be unable to place. In this, she is perhaps selfish, so absorbed in how his presence affects her that she does not think deep enough about his presence in itself.
He said her name, but says nothing else, and she is close enough now to touch him but she doesn’t, because she is less flippant now, though she remembers how it felt to touch him and take him into sleep, how he’d collapsed under her touch, and she’d felt the taste of power melting on her tongue like honey.

“How have you been?” she asks, and the question feels shallow, insufficient in relying her feelings, but it’s simple enough, straightforward enough, so she leans upon it. She is eager to tell him of her own knowledge, that she is stronger now, in her dream land, that she can do anything he’d ask of, there, but first, she wants to know about him, about what’s happened since they last ran across her dreams as wolves, wild and free.
It's only here, close and questioning, that she notices the change in him. She cannot ascribe it to any one particular thing, but rather an overall sense.
“Are you all right?” she asks then, another question, and one she thinks she fears the answer to.

Irisa

tarnished x heartworm