how it can hold me up and kill me in the end; vulgaris

[leliana]

leliana

she said “oh, I know that love is all about the wind
how it can hold me up and kill me in the end”

She doesn’t sleep much, but when she does, he is there in her dreams.

She dreams of him, and of Dovev, and of her children, and of Magnus. They take on the feel and pitch of a fever dream and, when she sees him, she cannot decide if her heart is racing from love or fear or if it is something else entirely. She cannot decide if it is perhaps a melding of the two and what that would even mean, but she cannot deny the way that her dreams go sweet and then harsh, loving and then terrifying.

She cannot decide if she is grateful when his scent begins to fade on the wind,

or if she feels an absolute ache in her gut that she cannot even have those horrifying pieces of him.

She grows thin, again, and although such things never completely wear away at her natural beauty, it does dull it. Her coat is no longer glossy and her face grows more angular, even more so when she bears her latest child. She names her by herself again, this time pressing “Linnea” into her poll with a kiss, and she does what she can to be a loving, present mother. She tells her stories, weaves tales of beauty and wonder, and does not let her recognize the captivity that her mother lives in—partially because she is afraid to try and leave and partially because she doesn’t even know where she would go, what she would do.

So she stays and waits.

She stays within Loess and listens for the whispers of rumors, for the voices that carry further than intended, and she tucks them in close, doing her best to stay alive for her daughters.

And she does this for months, for years, maybe.

Until she catches the viperous scent on the wind again and her brain goes foggy with remembering. She feels that familiar, dual pang as she rises to her feet, making sure that Linnea remains tucked away, sleeping peacefully within the caves that are now their home. Her wings remain folded and crimson by her sides, so rarely shifting nowadays, and she stumbles into the sun, blinking against the sudden brightness. When she finds him, that fear and that love grab at her throat, leaving her quiet.

There are things she wants to stay, wants to ask, wants to confess, but instead she says nothing.

Just stares at the ghost of her past.

@[vulgaris]