[private] lior;

[Nayl]

I am not afraid... I was born to do this.

The loss of one of their own rips deep inside her, splitting her core in a way she never imagined. Nerine had been untouchable, but now they are the caged beast being poked and prodded. Nayl fights back, snarling, rattling the prison bars, but will it ever be enough? When she thinks of her leadership now, she sees a shadow of what she had once been. Sylva and Hyaline have slipped through her hands like the sand she so steadily walks across now beneath the night sky. The crescent moon illuminates her path only so much, but she has long since memorized this trail. It’s almost second nature by now, her eyes cast down without much need to see where she is. The ocean at her left calmly murmurs as crickets chirp in the beach grass to her right. It’s a serene symphony of nature’s songs, but her mind is too involved, too lost in itself, to truly take note and admiration.

It's only when his musky scent reaches her nostrils that the world around her truly disappears. Suddenly, it’s only them at the mouth of his cave with the porcelain moonlight raining across her pied coat. Among her worries and stressors, Nayl still smiles when their eyes meet for the first time in weeks. A silent guardian he is. Even when she would consider herself almost entirely alone, she can still always feel his heavy gaze tracing the outline of her body.

Lior is never truly gone. He is here, by her side, always.

She doesn’t yet speak, but instead presses her forehead into the chiseled plane of his left shoulder. A deep breath drowns her in his scent, soothing her woes even for just the moment. Her eyes shut. She reflects back on their beginning, on their now, on their future. She thinks of their children – Castile and Isobell – and how they are growing too fast.

But then she is thinking of him, only him. Their eyes meet then – her fire to his storm – and she reaches to delicately lip his unruly mane. ”Soon, I will find a successor,” she whispers into the warm, summer night for his ears only, ”and then I can focus solely on you, on our family.” And then she is quiet as she tries to imagine a life without a kingdom weighing her shoulders down, a life where she could surround herself with love for the first time ever.

queen of nerine
daughter of covet & myrina

@[Lior]