She sees him with different eyes than he sees himself. In shades of pewter and white, with streaks of silver throughout the dark tangles of his mane. He is like a stormcloud, she thinks, so ominous and beautiful, a harbinger of what is to come, of the storms he keeps buried away so carefully inside him. She wonders at the shade of his wings, if those mottled grey feathers are softer at their bellies when they aren’t fastened so tightly to his sides - wonders, too, why he keeps them like that. It feels defensive, guarded. If she had wings at her shoulders instead of bones thrust up through her skin, would she not want to hold them aloft and lose herself to the sensation of the ocean breeze tangling in through each individual feather?
It makes her curious, in that soft quiet way she knows so well.
Her chin lifts and her eyes flash back to his face as if guided there by the sound of his voice, by the way the sand sighs beneath his feet as he moves closer. She feels pinned by him, trapped beneath the weight of those dark, stoic eyes - except she doesn’t mind, finds she doesn’t want to look away. For a moment her gaze is dragged to the symphony of movement beneath his skin, the tightening of muscles that whisper his intent to soft teal eyes that go wide and flash back to his face.
Is he going to touch her?
Is he going to touch her?
She goes suddenly soft, her nose, her mouth, her eyelashes. Even the motion in her chest and ribs still as he sweeps his nose so, so close across the surface of her skin. She closes her eyes, and her breath comes staggering back, catching and crippled in her lungs as she swallows back a ragged inhale. What would it feel like to be touched by someone outside of her family, someone other than her brother.
Wonder. He repeats, and her eyes fly open again in a flash of ocean-teal, half-hidden behind a fringe of red the same color as her skin. Her name sounds different on his lips, sounds almost beautiful in a way that makes her eyes on his so painfully intense. She wants to look away, but her body is ignoring her and all she can feel from her brain is electrical pulses misfiring beneath her skin. “Nightlock.” She whispers back, unsure and unblinking, taking her time with each letter so the name sounds more harsh than it did when he said it. “Nightlock.” She says again, but the letters are softer and she remembers how to blink, how to flush warm and glance away from him if only for a second.
She catches his smile though, uses her glance away to hide the one on her own lips that answers his so happily. So readily that it reaches the corners of her eyes and draws fingers over harsh lines that soften immediately. Then fade again at his next question. Her skin twitches unhappily, and the old tracks of rust drawn across her skin suddenly brighten with new red, new blood. When her gaze swings back to settle on his face, it is wary and reluctant and all etched in blood and bone and the shadows of her antlers. “So that I can pretend it’s my choice to be alone.” Soft, red, even her whisper bleeds.
It does not feel good to be so vulnerable, to show him the true depth of the pain she feels, pain hidden deeper than the wounds on her ruined skin. So she is quiet when she speaks again, reluctant and staring hard at feet the color of opals, smooth and shining and luminescent. “Even in a plagueword, I am strange.” There is a newer note of pain in her voice, a tightness that shreds in the edges of soft red skin around rust stained bone. To even mention the plague by name is to remember that little girl who had died because of the poor choices Wonder had made. She could have lived if only Wonder turned back to find help. Could have become like a sister or a friend.
But Wonder made her a ghost.
When her eyes finally lift to his face again, they are so bright with unshed tears, so teal and sad. But she doesn’t cry, doesn’t even let the wetness well along the rim of her eyes. “It’s better if I’m alone.” She says, soft and defeated, all hint of soft smiles gone from those gentle chestnut lips. Then, more subtly, her brow furrows and the action coaxes new drops of red that she has to blink back from her eyes. “How is it you can look at me like i’m not something terrible?”
i am brambles but i am tangled in your love