Golden eyes watching our every move
Losing time without the sun or moon
It feels like ages he stands there, simply staring at her. An eternity lost in her endless gaze, shadowed by thoughts and emotions he cannot even begin to guess at. He’s never been good at emotion, and hers are as much a mystery to him as his own so often are.
But she breaks the spell when she moves closer, an apology on her lips. She moves slowly, hesitantly, as though uncertain what her reception might be. He would always forgive her though, no matter how often she pushed him away. It is not in his nature to harbor resentment or anger. And he could never pretend to know her thoughts. Perhaps he had mistaken what was between them that day. Perhaps it had only ever been him.
He could never hold something that may have only been his wild imaginings against her. He could never try to cage her in his own ideals. Such a thing would be hollow at best. Empty and terrible, if she did not choose him, of her own volition. And she hadn’t. Still, he hadn’t been able to abandon her. Foolish perhaps, but then he’s always been infinitely foolish. He had given himself to her, and it is not something he would take back so lightly.
He feels hope though. She had asked for him, and perhaps that would be enough. His gaze remains fixed on her, longing and hope and hurt all tangled together, a snarled web of emotion he can’t seem to decipher. He remains silent as she speaks, his heart leaping erratically in his chest when she admits she had missed him. It takes him a moment to find the words, his mind already leaping at that persistent hope.
“I missed you too,” he says softly, an ache nearly audible in the words. He steps closer, wanting nothing so much as the draw her into his embrace. She apologizes again, and he draws closer, nearly touching now. He wants to touch her, but he needs her to tell him she wants him to. To tell him he hadn’t been imagining things. So instead he skims his nose over her shoulder, a bare breath away from her skin. “Why… did you… “
Hide from me, he wants to say, but the words never quite leave his lips.
Suddenly he stills, inhaling deeply for the first time. There is something subtly different in her scent. It had changed, something new affecting it. It takes him a moment to recognize it, to put the pieces together. At first he knows surprise, a thread of delight, his mind going to the night they had spent together. But another breath brings confusion, and another recognition, followed so closely by bewilderment that they may as well be the same.
He withdraws slightly, as though he might erase her scent from his lungs, the knowledge it had brought, even as his gut hollows and his mind scrambles to find another explanation.
He’s mistaken. He must be.
ether