hold my hand, it's a long way down to the bottom of the river
She is still curled beneath his heavy neck when morning finds them, barely more than a tangle of bodies pressed close to ward off the ghosts of loneliness. Her mouth hovers close to the dark of his skin, her lips like fingers tracing the patterns of pink, puckered scar-tissue and delighting in the way his flesh trembled beneath her touch. She felt strangely whole as she stood beside him , against him, her lips tracing quiet kissing along the wide ridge of his heavy jaw. “Offspring.” She breathes into his cheek and a smile glows on her lips, etched gently into the shadow of her mouth, when he pulls her closer still. They remained that way for hours, ignoring the sun as it climbed higher into the bright aching blue of a morning sky.
But then it is time and she is slipping reluctantly out of his grasp to stand facing him. She thinks it’ll be easier this way, with his face bared openly to her and hers to his, without hungry touches and gentle kisses to fog their thoughts. “I’ll come with you anywhere.” She tells him with foreign softness to the delicate angles of her brown and white face. “But I need to see my mother first, I understand something now that I didn’t before.” She pauses and her brow furrows a little, those dark eyes dropping to his chest, heavy with thought and uncertainty. “I cannot leave things as they are now.” Her eyes lift and return to his face and she is startled by the wariness that waits there for her. But it only takes a second to understand, just a heartbeat in time and she steps closer to push her nose against his, along the line of his jaw and the curve of his cheek, to press promises in the shape of kisses to the dark of his skin. “I will always come back to you, Offspring, I promise.” She draws back just a little, pressing a kiss to the soft curve of his mouth just above the corner of his lip. “I only need three days.”
With that, and a terrible amount of reluctance, she turned and left again. But this time she paused just before he was out of sight and turned to watch him for a long moment. He was large and imposing, intimidating with so many scars like pink spider webbing across his coat. But most noticeable were the shadows of doubt in his face as he watched her go. She wondered if he could hear the way her heart shattered in her chest, if he could hear it all the way across the clearing. But she was too far for him to hear her so she willed him to trust her, and then she turned and disappeared into the shadows.
--
The two days she had spent with her mother had been good ones, days of smiles and laughter and remembering things that had made Isle’s heart hurt before, but now she understood. Somehow, understanding Oksana’s heart, her love, it eased the ache she felt. And Isle did understand. She understood what it felt like to be willing to give all of yourself to someone, to endure pain and hurt for the sake of something more. It was love and it wasn’t, still volatile and unpredictable in its newness. But she could not deny the pull she felt when she was with him, or how much worse it was when she was away from him. She felt it urgently, like a dying man gasping for air. It was even worse now in the days she had been gone, like a blade buried in her chest and she could scarcely breathe around it. But she felt something else too, a guardedness she clung to even despite the way her heart begged her to ignore it. He was still just a stranger, and she wondered if she could truly trust him with the jagged pieces of her broken heart.
She felt the cold long before she saw the snow gleaming at her through the dark of night, and her skin prickled and protested against it. Offspring’s coat was thick and coarse, suited to the extreme weather of the Tundra, but hers was the thin silk of a summer coat, bright and sleek with no protection against the weather. She hunched uncomfortably against the bite of almost-winter but it did not slow her down. With some uncertainty she followed the thin, winding path worn smooth by many years of many hooves, and only when she at last came upon the immense wall encircling the kingdom did she finally stop. Wind whipped up around her, tangling the dark wisps of her mane as the currents of air raced along the wall. A shiver raced along her spine as the cold buried itself like teeth in her skin, and she wondered with just a shadow of uncertainty if Offspring would remember her promise. Three days. With the dawn of the third day casting pale gold reflections in the dark dapples of her gleaming coat, she hovered uncertainly outside the gate. She could enter, she supposed, but something held her back, like hand wrapped around her heels. Instead she waited, uncertain.
Isle
