divine places to die in; jenger-pony

[exist]

while collecting the stars, I connected the dots.
I don’t know who I am, but now I know who I’m not.

He reaches for her while she is turned away, but she must know, must feel his eyes against her face or his breath roiling like fog against her neck because she turns, pale eyes soft and narrow, and watches him. But she is too late, waited too long, and by the time her eyes find his, drift down to touch those pooling shadows, he is as he has been. Distant, stoic, gruff when his brow furrows and he watches her darkly from beneath it.

She finds that she does not mind though, or maybe does not believe him anymore, because her lips have touched his shoulder and his neck and the curve of his elegant face and still, he has stayed. It feels important, relevant, good that he has, for now, chosen her prying over the safety of leaving, and it stirs something deep inside her. A curiosity, an instinct, the barest flicker in her belly. A heat, an ache, a longing that she can barely make sense of. But when he turns those dark eyes on her, when he does not disappear each time she noses his skin, that flicker deepens and darkens until she is knotted by it.

He follows so easily, almost willingly, she thinks, as they leave the forest and cross the meadow together. It makes it easy to forget his earlier gruffness, the way he had bared smooth teeth in her face and pushed her back with the same, dark scowl. They walk slowly, and she slows her stride, dropping back so that she is by his shoulder and her eyes can jump to his face, his neck, the ripple of sinuous muscle beneath smooth mahogany. Part of her is making sure that he does not change his mind and leave – she would follow him, she is certain, coax him back with her stubbornness, or her quiet affection if sheer will was not enough. But there is another part of her that watches him just to appease her curiosity, to be lost in the beauty of his wild face and that heavy expression, to be close enough at his shoulder that she can smell winter on his skin, the forest in the dark tangles of his mane. Her lips wander too, slipping against him to touch his shoulder and taste the hint of salt and earth, a musk that is so uniquely his, and she does so unabashedly, with a growing affection that even he cannot miss.

They are both still once they reach the shoreline, quiet and unmoving, carved from stone while they trace an unending blue that roils and waves and splashes near their feet. I.. He starts and stops, and the pause is like a hook in her belly pulling her close because she can see in his face that something is different, something is not right. At first she wonders if it is the water, if there are demons beneath the surface waiting to pull him under, memories like shark, like weights around his heels. “Mandan?” She asks, quiet and uncertain, slipping beneath his neck and against his chest, soft and sinuous and meant to distract from whatever it is that is trying to steal him from her. Her lips are hesitant at first when they roam across his skin, tracing shapes and tasting shadows, more urgent when he stays quiet and she imagines some distance widening between them. She touches his chest, his shoulder, the nearest ribs, up higher and –

“Oh!” She says, breathes, is startled by the new bulge beneath his skin, horrified by the way the skin stretches and bursts, spider-webs of flesh come undone. It is the beads of blood that spur her into action, small rubies filled with him, with pain, gleaming in the cores of those bulges, and she pushes her nose against him, pushes her magic into him in a way that is almost desperate. But he staggers back and away, pushing new distance between them, and it takes everything not to follow, everything to just stand back and allow the hurt to find him. She can hear the moment bone and feather rip through his skin, a wet tear and the way he pants when he finally turns back to look at her, and all these things make her flinch. Did you do this to me? He asks, and she is not ready for the accusation that is etched into the shadow of his dark face.

Her ears pin themselves to the tangles of a copper mane, wounded and offended, and her words are sharp when they find him. “Of course not, Mandan,” a pause and she softens just a little, her eyes drawn reflexively by her healers heart to the rivulets of blood tracing down his shoulders, “I do not have that ability.” She is firm in this, but her wings betray their pleasure at this new happening, at the pair of black wings that now perch at his withers. Her wings have always been arrogant things, and they unfurl to their widest, shifting suddenly to fire - though it is not real fire and there is no heat or smoke, nothing that burns. Instead they flicker and gleam, flashing gold and orange and red, blue at the tips where the flame would be the hottest. When they are satisfied that his own wings have noticed, that they are instinctively impressed in the way wings should be, the fire flattens to feather again. The colors are all the same, but they are soft and smooth when they resettle against the curve of her back.

“Mandan,” she says, and her ears have unpinned, her face is soft again, softer when he laughs, “I won’t ever hurt you like that.” She wants to close the distance between them again, wants to collide with his chest and push her healing into his veins, clean away his wounds, his blood, with gentle strokes of her tongue. But he was the one that had pulled away, he was the one that had searched for the distance to put between them. So she stays frozen, unhappy, her eyes on his face, his neck, his wings, his wounds again. I don’t even know how to use these things. He confesses and steps towards her. She smiles, faintly, unfurling her wings again for him to see. In the wind they lift and lilt, angling the breeze beneath them in a way that is reflexive. “It is instinctive,” she says, taking a step closer, willing the same from him again, “wings are arrogant things, they will know what to do. You just have to let them.”

Then he is beside her again, his lips against her copper neck and she is so soft beneath him, reflexively arching her neck to be closer. “Exist.” He says, he mumbles, he breathes against her skin and she cannot help the shiver that races beneath her skin. “Mandan.” Her voice is whisper soft, uncertain, but when he pulls back to look at her she follows him, ducking beneath his neck again to curl against his chest. It is as much out of selfish affection as it is out of necessity, because she means to heal him and she has no way of knowing how deep the wounds run – if it is just the knots at his shoulder or the skin beneath, maybe even the bones of fragile wings erupted too quickly. Her mouth finds his shoulder, and it as much a kiss as it is anything else, but she uses the contact to push her healing into him, finding all of those broken places and filling them with pieces of herself. When she is done she is tired, not exhausted, but she droops against him softly like a wilted flower, lifting her mouth to his withers to clean away the blood. She makes no effort to peel away from him – and even though she is tired, she is not too tired to stand on her own, to step away and fly to Tephra. There is something good about this closeness, about how his lips had felt against her neck, how her name had sounded carved into her skin by the mumble of his voice. So she stays because she is selfish, because despite the way he always scowled at her, she is stubborn. “Mandan?” She asks after a moment, subdued in the curve of his chest and with her cheek against his shoulder, “we should probably go, it’ll be dark soon.” She needs him to be the first to pull away, the one to put that distance between them again because she cannot, because it feels too right, too safe, too perfect pressed against the beating of his heart and she knows she is too selfish to pull away. “Have you decided which we will do?” She asks again, twisting beneath him to run her lips along the underneath of his jaw, we because she is unwilling to leave his side now, unable. “Will we fly or swim?”

Exist