[open] i leave you my dust and dry bones

[Raed]

it's a lonely road, I know,
and nothing ever stands between a bullet and your soul;

He had not expected his words to stir such a response from her, and when she presses into him it causes his skin to burn – a heat that he has to force to die away, for he recognizes that the closeness is out of a desire for consolation, and not want. He was, at his core, decent and kind, even if it was buried beneath layers of grit and something that solitude has hardened. But he softens himself, for her. His blue lips find her poll again, caressing briefly against her skin, his voice low as he says, ”I didn’t mean to upset you.”

There are few that he has come across that knew the Beqanna that he had been born into, but judging by her reaction, she was one of them. He had looked for the Chamber, when he had first come back, but it was apparent that everything was gone. The new lands had been long since established by the time he got here; they already had their own histories written across them, by generations that he did not know. It was why he had remained on the outskirts, having little interest in blending with the strangers that crawled across the lands.

But something about her stirred something in him. Something protective, something that made him want to pull her close and shield her from what was happening. His cerulean nose brushes against her cheek, the words leaving his mouth slowly, as though he was testing them before he said them, ”I can find you someplace safe to go. There are a few safelands.” A pause, then, as he adds wryly, his mouth still lingering near her skin. ”They aren’t like what we knew before, but they’ll do.”

R A E D

@[Osyva]