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‘Etojo,’ She answered him in the night, and he spun to her voice and watched her emerge from foliage and shadow. Her body softly radiant beneath moonlight as the shadows peeled away from her skin and danced off the muted autumn hues of the feathers which fell softly against her neck. His eyes fell to just behind her shoulders, strong enough once to bare the weight of wings she had not been born with. Gone. He exhaled soft and long, he had not noticed in the hollow, so blinded he had been with his wants and his anger. The passing of time had changed them both, and he had only ever known one part of her and that was so long ago. Surely, she knew he too, could not be the same creature. ‘Is it fate again, or are you always looking for me?’ “You…” he bit his tongue. Held back his retort. He drew a slow ragged breath, and with a smidgen of fortitude he knew not he had, he damn well restrained himself. Her words rolling over his tensed muscles to fall unthwarted into the shadowy mess of thick foliage behind him. Fighting her had always led him into a hole too deep to escape from. Lucrezia knew how to provoke him, how to play him for the fool, turn him into one. How she loved to wave that word around, but he wanted more from her than her sarcastic stubbornness. In the dark here and now, he wanted much, much more. “You have always distained me.” He told her, his rough voice almost resigned. “I looked for you because…” the words fell away into nothing and he shook his head as if it would help him make sense of it. Because he was supposed to? Was he? Lucrezia was no longer a child. Even then, she had seemed to spurn the presence of his mere shadow. No. He looked for her because now that he’d found her he didn’t want to let go. She was a tie to a past he hadn’t forgotten, he wanted that back, somehow, someway. He cocked his head and stared at her, his eyes almost impassive though they could never look upon Lucrezia completely cold. “You have taken from me.” He stated simply. Because taking and hindering today felt much the same. If he could not have the blue filly, he’d have something of her. “I want something in return.” And he stepped forward, closer. His coat slicked cold and wet with a sweat brought of aggravation. And much as she did, though for a very different reason, he too glowed dimly radiant beneath the glow of the moon. |
@[Lucrezia]