08-04-2016, 01:41 AM
She rests tucked close to his side, as she prefers to do, with her cheek pressed to the beating of his heart because sometimes this is the only sound that can lull her to sleep. Without the ice beneath his skin, without the magic of winter in his veins, he is so, so warm. She likes him this way, but she knows that the absence of the ice in his heart feels like a knife wedged there, so she likes it less. He has fire now, just as he had possessed the snow, and she thinks it must rage inside him like an inferno because he burns with it. There are some nights, nights when even his thoughts leak through the cracks in his dreams, and he is fitful and fever-bright beneath her lips. She tries to soothe him, to trace constellations in kisses against the uneven dark of his skin, but even this is not enough.
He is fitful again tonight, and his heat wakes her from a quiet slumber. She shifts to brush her nose along the curve of his jaw and her eyes are dark and soft beneath the furrowing of a concerned brow. Thoughts leak from him, not full thoughts, just bits and piece of incoherent story, fragments of something larger. They are as they often are, thoughts of the Kingdom, of the booming population, of the weight of it where it settles like a world upon his shoulders. She sighs and touches him again, brushing the forelock across his brow to watch the restless flickering of his eyes beneath those dark, heavy lids. There are more thoughts now, and these must be more heavily guarded because they come short and staccato, strings of words pulled together with no meaning. Stalls, blades, beasts, and his fever deepens. Every once in a while she catches her own name, like the beating of an irregular heart, and selfishly, selfishly, it curls the corners of her mouth into the same-quiet smile she saved just for him.
But then another string of thoughts follow, a trail of bullets through her chest, and she finds quite suddenly that she cannot breathe as the last word wedges like a burr in her throat. Infidelity. She reels away from him reflexively, not with anger or disgust, nothing so dark from the delicate brown mare, but with a confusion that burns painfully in the pit of her stomach. There is a moment where she stays, where she is frozen in place and her eyes fall like dark bruises over the savage elegance of his slumbering face. But the word comes a second time, and then a third, like he is as trapped by it as she now is, and it is enough to undo her. As though a tether had been undone between them, she springs away to the mouth of the cave, pausing once to see that little Eoine still slept peacefully nearby, that Offspring still burned where he slept, where they had slept.
Her heart roars again, the sound of agony silenced, and she turns from them both to disappear into the approaching dawn. She hardly notices the snow as she races through it, hardly notices the bite of frigid winter against her skin after having been curled so close to his warmth for so long. She flies past the wall and notices none of its beauty, and then through the narrow gate, trying desperately to outrun the thoughts that seem to pick themselves out of the dark of her confusion. Time passes in a jagged mess, it steals minutes and hours, it pulls the sun up above the trees so that at least she can see without the dark, without branches leaving more welts across her chest and neck. She runs until her sides heave, until she cannot breathe anymore but it is alright because she doesn’t want to, because breathing feels like choking on stones. She runs until sweat is damp in the hollow of her neck and her flank, until her eyes are rimmed white and wild because she is not enough, because she will never be enough. She runs and she runs, but she cannot outrun the agony in her chest.
But then, impossibly, he is there. He is there, and if the silhouette had belonged to anyone else she might not have noticed, but he is hers and she is his, and she knows him. Anguish swallows her and she feels hollowed out in an instant, but even as she slows to a ragged halt she cannot take those quiet eyes from his face. When she looks at him she is wounded, when she looks at him she is undone. She wonders at all the ways she had let him down, wonders which had been unforgivable. But then her eyes do drift, they wander because it hurts, and it is only as they wander that she realizes where they have come to rest. It is the place they first met, a quiet placed carved out from the rest of the meadow, the place where she had broken and he had let her crumble against him, protecting the pieces as he knit her back together. She isn’t ready for the searing flare of affection that bursts open in her chest, isn’t ready when her heart reaches for him again. Her eyes flash back to his face, wild and uncertain and she tries to understand why he’s doing this, why he came at all if he doesn’t love her anymore.
“Offspring-” she says, she begs, she closes her eyes and crumbles because nothing has ever hurt as much as she hurts now.
i am well aware of the shadows in my heart
He is fitful again tonight, and his heat wakes her from a quiet slumber. She shifts to brush her nose along the curve of his jaw and her eyes are dark and soft beneath the furrowing of a concerned brow. Thoughts leak from him, not full thoughts, just bits and piece of incoherent story, fragments of something larger. They are as they often are, thoughts of the Kingdom, of the booming population, of the weight of it where it settles like a world upon his shoulders. She sighs and touches him again, brushing the forelock across his brow to watch the restless flickering of his eyes beneath those dark, heavy lids. There are more thoughts now, and these must be more heavily guarded because they come short and staccato, strings of words pulled together with no meaning. Stalls, blades, beasts, and his fever deepens. Every once in a while she catches her own name, like the beating of an irregular heart, and selfishly, selfishly, it curls the corners of her mouth into the same-quiet smile she saved just for him.
But then another string of thoughts follow, a trail of bullets through her chest, and she finds quite suddenly that she cannot breathe as the last word wedges like a burr in her throat. Infidelity. She reels away from him reflexively, not with anger or disgust, nothing so dark from the delicate brown mare, but with a confusion that burns painfully in the pit of her stomach. There is a moment where she stays, where she is frozen in place and her eyes fall like dark bruises over the savage elegance of his slumbering face. But the word comes a second time, and then a third, like he is as trapped by it as she now is, and it is enough to undo her. As though a tether had been undone between them, she springs away to the mouth of the cave, pausing once to see that little Eoine still slept peacefully nearby, that Offspring still burned where he slept, where they had slept.
Her heart roars again, the sound of agony silenced, and she turns from them both to disappear into the approaching dawn. She hardly notices the snow as she races through it, hardly notices the bite of frigid winter against her skin after having been curled so close to his warmth for so long. She flies past the wall and notices none of its beauty, and then through the narrow gate, trying desperately to outrun the thoughts that seem to pick themselves out of the dark of her confusion. Time passes in a jagged mess, it steals minutes and hours, it pulls the sun up above the trees so that at least she can see without the dark, without branches leaving more welts across her chest and neck. She runs until her sides heave, until she cannot breathe anymore but it is alright because she doesn’t want to, because breathing feels like choking on stones. She runs until sweat is damp in the hollow of her neck and her flank, until her eyes are rimmed white and wild because she is not enough, because she will never be enough. She runs and she runs, but she cannot outrun the agony in her chest.
But then, impossibly, he is there. He is there, and if the silhouette had belonged to anyone else she might not have noticed, but he is hers and she is his, and she knows him. Anguish swallows her and she feels hollowed out in an instant, but even as she slows to a ragged halt she cannot take those quiet eyes from his face. When she looks at him she is wounded, when she looks at him she is undone. She wonders at all the ways she had let him down, wonders which had been unforgivable. But then her eyes do drift, they wander because it hurts, and it is only as they wander that she realizes where they have come to rest. It is the place they first met, a quiet placed carved out from the rest of the meadow, the place where she had broken and he had let her crumble against him, protecting the pieces as he knit her back together. She isn’t ready for the searing flare of affection that bursts open in her chest, isn’t ready when her heart reaches for him again. Her eyes flash back to his face, wild and uncertain and she tries to understand why he’s doing this, why he came at all if he doesn’t love her anymore.
“Offspring-” she says, she begs, she closes her eyes and crumbles because nothing has ever hurt as much as she hurts now.