She cannot ever remember a time when she had been so quiet. Not a loud thing, but full of presence and command because she had been nothing but a queen. It has defined her as much as being a mother has, or as much as death has and she’s not sure who or what she is now. Maybe that doesn’t even matter any more.
Looking at him, though, she realizes that he matters. That she wants to fix what’s wrong and missing in him, and once she could have done that. But her magic has mutated just enough in coming back to this side of life that she can make the earth tremble and move for them but she cannot give him back his own life.
She is earth magic, fecund and vibrant but even she has her limits and this - it is beyond her ability to restore him fully. Moselle isn’t even sure if he yearns for a complete restoration… sadness and death might define him as much as her queenship had defined her. It is like the loss of a limb, phantom pain and memory but it’s all that they’ve got to hold on to.
He looks beyond her, somewhere far away, and she understands that as he says to her what he says. She understands that too, even if she doesn’t agree and doesn’t believe that’s the truth. “Everyone deserves a chance to live, to really live and feel despite how beautifully painful it can be.”
Moselle thinks it is odd to like a stranger so quickly but she has always been a brash soul. He is likable, dead or alive or caught somewhere in between, that she finds she’d gravitate to him no matter what. The daisies retreat from his spine to weave themselves into a daisy chain crown around his ears and head. That suits him more, like a sad prince risen from the grave.
This then, might be the extent of her magic - parlor tricks and flowers but it makes her happy enough. She has always delighted in small mercies, maybe even whims, like this. Smiling still, now that he’s smiling too, she laughs just a little and the sound is musical and sweet and girlish. All the things that she hasn’t been in such a very long time.
“I don’t know either… guess we make it up as we go along?” It seemed silly to not have a plan for going forward but she’d been dead for far longer than she’d ever been alive, so it’s not surprising that neither of them know what is to happen next. Mystery is the spice of life apparently.
@[kensley] pfft! the delay is worth it for your words! ❤️