05-04-2016, 08:44 PM
"we pull apart the darkness while we can"
But Killdare was like a balm to the flayed open wounds on her heart. A hand to hold in the dark loneliness that chased her through long days and filled her nights with nightmares real enough to leave blue on skin that should be brown and coax curving horns of bright obsidian from the hollowed out angles of a delicate, wild face. When he had refused to burn her that day in the meadow, refused to hurt her where so many others had leapt at the chance, something had changed. She had cut herself anyway of course, stubborn and brittle and instantly wary, with the point of one horn so that they could watch the shallow wound on her foreleg knit itself back together before the blood had even spilled into the damp grass below. He had asked her not to do it again, not to hurt herself, and the quiet concern in his voice had struck her. It was strange, impossible even, but more than the shallow cut on her leg had been healed that day.
She hears him through the trees before she sees him, but she knows his sound, the weight of his heels in the mossy ground, so she does not startle. For him, she softens as she does for no one else, the harsh angles of her body disappearing beneath a sea of supple blue. When she eases towards him, quiet in the tides of irresolvable reservations, her muscles do not snake like razor-wire beneath the shiver of her skin.
Malis, he says and her brow furrows deeply, disappearing completely beneath thick tangles of indigo and black. Hesitancy bleeds into her expression, into the way she holds herself back a moment to watch him because it is still a wonder that he means so much to her, much more than she will ever let him know. Where Pollock had cut her open and left wounds like valleys in the marrow of her broken bones, Killdare had come and filled them. It was pieces of him, slivers of undeserved kindness and compassion, of warmth she barely understood, that held her together now. While love was not a thing she recognized, not a word she felt she had any right to, she suspected this was closest she would ever come to it. What she felt for him was possessiveness without jealousy, desire without hunger, a warm need that blossomed tentatively in her chest when she found herself sinking into the green oceans of his eyes. She did not need his exclusive affection, did not want it because she did not deserve it, because with her ghosts and her shadows and all those broken pieces, she would never be enough. It was his happiness she wanted most of all.
She would’ve slipped closer still, to him. Would’ve pressed her tired face to the curve of his neck, her cheek flat against the plains of his shoulder if not for the way his skin still smoldered, thick and acrid like the ash that fell from his nose like dirty snow. She is weak in this moment, weak in her quiet resolve to hold him at a distance so that he can hold on to his Dacia. Weak, with their daughter pressed unsteadily against her legs, a perfect blend of two unlikely parents, blue and brown with the smallest pair of mahogany dragon wings draped over her small ribcage. In this moment, Malis is glad for the way his skin smolders too warm for her to touch him.
But the heat and the acrid stink mean nothing to Victra, so the girl tips forward before Malis can stop her. She is almost against this impossibly large man, tucked away in the comfort of his warm, when Malis shoots forward to stop her. The blue mare drapes her head over the filly, pulling her back with her chin across the narrow of her delicate chest. Victra is startled but unafraid, so she settles back compliantly against her mother’s long legs, staring quietly up at the man who she innately knew was important in some way. Relaxing again just a little, Malis buries her nose in the soft tangles of her daughters forelock, quiet until she says, “Killdare, meet your daughter. Her name is Victra.” There is a short pause, a silence no longer than one single beat of her heart and then, “Victra, this is your father.”
MALIS
makai x oksana