05-10-2016, 08:30 PM
"we pull apart the darkness while we can"
Perhaps that is what makes this feel like so much more- this easy, albeit awkward, closeness between such a strange and broken family. It doesn’t feel like jagged pieces forced together, it doesn’t feel like fake smiles and polite propriety. It feels honest and as real as anything she has ever known in her life. She remembers her own family as they stand together like this, can see her own innocence reflected back at her in the form of her daughter. Oksana and Makai had tried and failed to protect Malis from this world, from death and violence and disappointment. But it found her anyway. She can remember the way her father had reeked of death and rot when he finally abandoned them in the Jungle. She can remember how she hid her tears and her heartbreak even when her mother could not. That was how her family had ended up here in the first place, with Oksana seeking out the support of her sister, Straia. The Chamber was supposed to be a safe place for them. But her world had shattered a dozen more times after that, plucked out of restless sleep to find herself trapped in very real nightmares that left very real scars on her skin and heart.
She learned sooner than some that there was no place in this world that could be considered safe.
And yet she could feel herself slipping into that dangerous place, even now with her mouth tracing shapes against Victra’s small bay back and the heat of her ash king seeping deep enough to warm her frozen heart. This felt safe. It was everything she had ever wanted as a girl; a best friend and a family – she had never dreamed of things like love, not when she saw how it destroyed her parents. But she had wanted a someone, a light in the dark when the shadows grew too deep. She had found that with Killdare, but did her happiness not come at the cost of his? He had voiced his concerns that his Dacia might not accept this.
She feels torn in two watching them; even so she cannot hide the small smile that fades across her lips when Victra seems so pleased at being a perfect blend of her strange, imperfect parents. But then that smile is gone from the blue of her quiet mouth when Killdare answers their daughter’s sleepy question. It is not Victra he addresses, not that she notices as her eyelids grow heavy and she sways against her father’s large legs, but Malis. Six years, and she is undone by the intensity in those pale green eyes. She hides it as well as she can, with her lips still pressed to the curve of Victra’s withers, though she thinks a shiver might have slipped unwelcome across the blue length of her spine. When she turns to touch him, as fleeting as the life of a raindrop, she expects his skin to flinch beneath her mouth. It is why she pulls away so quickly, instantly uncertain, though she conceals that easily.
But he doesn’t.
He doesn’t flinch or sigh or flash sad eyes full of pity.
He pulls her close.
She is not as strong as she pretends to be, but she is as selfish. When he reaches out to draw her back to him, she folds willingly into the embrace. It is strange and unfamiliar, but it is home, and she can feel that truth in the very marrow of her bones. She is stiff at first with uncertainty, with indecision, but those feelings drain away when Victra sighs sleepily between them and tumbles into a contented, happy heap of legs and wings beneath their feet. Malis softens a little more, and her lips move to rest against Killdare’s sooty shoulder now that Victra is sleeping. But he shatters her quiet with his next request, just one single word from dark lips pressed to the curve of her small blue ear.
Stay.
She feels a thousand things at one, a hundred thoughts that won’t line up for her to see them properly. She wonders if he knows the darkness in her heart, wonders if he had read the uncertainties in her face when first he had joined them, if he guessed that she wanted to leave so that he could find happiness untainted by the ruin she always brought. The small blue mare balks and might’ve even backed away if it weren’t for their daughter sleeping peacefully underfoot. Her heart races in her chest and she does try to pull away from Killdare, just a little, so that maybe he won’t feel it through the skin of her trembling chest. When her thoughts finally seem to organize and she is certain she has control over every inch of her blue, thorny face, she says, “What do you think will happen if I stay, Killdare?”
It is then that she realizes he’s split her open wider than Pollock ever had.
MALIS
makai x oksana:| :| :|