[private] I'll be watching from the center of the hollow moon; Aislyn

[Voracious]

You twist, I turn, who's the first to burn?

You sit and stay, I don't obey.

His entire body warms at the vow she makes, pale eyes brightening as hope fleetingly overshadows the heavy despair in his heart. He thinks that perhaps that is all he needed. All he has ever needed. Someone who believes in him. Someone who could remind him of everything he yearns to be. It’s not even the words he requires. It’s just the steady promise in her bright eyes.

Drawing in a breath, he smiles. If there is anything he could say in response, it becomes lost on the back of his tongue when she touches him. His eyes slip closed when she brushes his shoulder, head turning instinctually into that tender touch, mouth finding the curve of her neck behind the delicate curl of her ear. It lingers as long as hers does, and when she slips away, he lets her. A part of him wants to follow. Wants that touch to last longer.

But tenderness is something so new and foreign to him, he does not know if he should. Does not know if she would allow it.

When he opens his eyes again, those aqua depths are filled with a luminous yearning he can’t name, much less express. Tilting his head, he can only stare at her until his tongue finally unsticks itself from the roof of his mouth. “How was I ever so lucky to have you find me?”

It’s a rhetorical question of course. Of all the creatures he has discovered in this overhead world, he has found no one quite like her. No one who sees him like she does.

He blinks when she asks him if he lives anywhere, the question unexpected. A frown tugs at his lips as he focuses on her, baffled. He hesitates a moment before replying, “I live… everywhere.” It takes him a moment longer to realize that she was probably asking him if he lived in a home, not just anywhere. Eyes clearing as a chagrined expression crosses his features, he shakes his head slightly, antlers swaying. “You meant if I found a home, didn’t you?” He shakes his head again, a little harder this time, a rueful light in his eyes. “If so, then I don’t live anywhere.”

Voracious

@Aislyn

[Aislyn]

BUT I HOPE I NEVER LOSE THE BRUISES THAT YOU LEFT BEHIND

She knows now that she is not imagining what is trying so hard to grow between them. It washes over her like a wave when he returns her touch, when he seems to shift closer to her in that subconscious need for more—the need that matches her own, and she almost gives into it. But there is always this ever present feeling of needing to be careful, that the flickering flame was still too fragile and that she might extinguish it rather than feed it.

There was so much of this world that Voracious still didn’t understand, and there is a part of her that thinks what he is feeling is only because he doesn’t know any better—that maybe his attachment to her is only because she had been there when he escaped that other world, and had been one of the few to maintain contact with him in this one.

She was familiar, and maybe that was all there is to it, and perhaps he would realize that later.

“We’re both lucky,” she tells him quietly with another cautious smile. Would she have followed that floating light as the slightly cynical adult she is now? She isn’t so sure. Young Aislyn had been stupidly fearless in a way she wasn’t anymore; she doesn’t think this adult version of herself would have walked through that door in the middle of the woods. She is lucky the light had found her before she had learned to question and doubt everything she comes across. She is certain Voracious would not have remained where he was—she knows he would have found a way out, somehow. But it wouldn’t have been her that he is standing with had she not been foolishly brave enough to risk entering a realm she may not have returned from.

“I don’t really live anywhere, either,” she begins, having once again taking a step closer alongside him, until his wings nearly brush her sides if she were to shift even a breath closer. “I’ve lived in a few places, following my parents mostly, but I never stayed.” The first-born of their children, Aislyn had been born before Atrox and Ryatah developed into the rock-solid pair that they were now, but, perhaps by some strange twist of fate, they had always lived in the same place—first Tephra, and later Hyaline. But the circumstances surrounding her birth had been peculiar to say the least, and it was actually just across the border in Taiga where she had been born—under a cloud of smoke and surrounded by unnatural darkness.  “I want to show you Taiga,” she tells him, a cautious hope alighting in her brightly colored eyes. “It’s where I was born.”

A I S L Y N

@Voracious

[Voracious]

You twist, I turn, who's the first to burn?

You sit and stay, I don't obey.

If she had asked, he would have told her it was her and her alone. There had been others there. Others that had helped in his desperate bid for freedom. But she is the only one he had this connection with. The only one he wanted to seek out time and again. If she hadn’t been there, he has no doubt he would be so much more alone than he is. And he’s not certain his desire to be better would have survived it.

He knows he is naive in so many ways, but their connection is one thing he has never doubted. Even if he doesn’t quite understand the ways in which it has evolved, he knows what they share is real. Perhaps more real than anything else in his life.

Her quiet declaration brings a smile to his lips, his aqua eyes warm and bright as he stares at her. He’s not quite sure why she imagines herself lucky to have found him, but isn’t that why he keeps wanting to see her time and again? She brings out the best in him even when he fears his very worst is rising to claim him.

Voracious nods when she tells him she does not live anywhere either, gaze resting steadily on her. He’s almost afraid to look away, lest she disappear and leave him alone with the demon inside him again. She had slipped alongside him, so close they are almost touching. The blue-tipped feathers of his wings are no more than a hair's breadth from the warmth of her skin. Unable to help himself, he shuffles his wings until they brush against her ribcage. He only wishes it were his skin against hers, not his feathers.

The desire is so strong he lifts his wing without thinking. Then he stops, realizing his actions. His wing remains frozen above her. He had been acting on instinct. He had always acted on instinct without even thinking about it, but this one brings confusion too. He can’t explain why he wants to touch her so badly, but the chorus of it sings so strongly in his blood he had acted without questioning it.

It takes him a moment to realize she had said she wished to take him to her childhood home. To the place he was born. He frowns at that. He had learned of the children called foals in this place, but they confuse him too. He knows that children grow and become adults, but has never discovered where the children come from. He had asked someone once, but the mare had stared at him wide-eyed before stammering an excuse to leave.

He had assumed then that their method of creation must be a secret, like the methods that created he and his brothers.

Eyes bright with curiosity, he smiles at her, wondering if she knew the answer. “I would like that. Do you remember how you were born?”

Voracious

@Aislyn