03-15-2018, 03:53 PM
we are crooked souls trying to stay up straight
She finds him (she always will) with tender touches of her mouth against his auburn skin, curling into the strength of his side and familiarly leaning against the downy-softness of his many blue feathers. He does not remember what he had been doing previously - was he needed somewhere, perhaps? Had he been turned towards the sea in thought, losing all track of time and sense of place until the moment her lips echo his name, and breathed life back into him with their touch? All is forgotten as she comes to stand beside him, and he is thankful for it. A shuddering exhale leaves his throat as she awakens him from whatever place in his mind he had been, his cerulean gaze quickly resting on her familiar form. Merely being beside her is comforting and he relaxes beneath the soft breaths of her against him, turning his neck towards her to brush his cobalt muzzle tenderly across the gentle plane of her ivory and honey-gold cheek.‘You’re leaving.’
He does not react - not physically. Nothing about his posture shifts (the careful way that he leans into her as much as she leans into him, the softness of his lips against her bright and warm skin) except for perhaps the way his once bright eyes now grow dim as they find the amber of hers, resting on the irises with a steady inhale of breath with fluttering nostrils. Starlight reflects there, in the shining brilliance of her eyes, and he seems to become lost in them while silence grows between them, interrupted by the steady roll of dark waves against a shadowed shoreline.
There is no anger that curls in his chest to offer her a defense, nor does he find that there is an unbearable guiltiness pressing on his heart to open himself up to sorrow - it is merely acceptance that he feels, as if he had known this all along and only had been waiting for her to bring it up.
For he would never lay such a heavily-weighted thought onto her - not when she had given up most of her lifestyle to stay with him, birthed his children, and remained a constant for him as he attempted to understand the responsibility that came with leadership. But now that the words leave her lips, he feels as if the lock finally has opened with a key, and it is relief that floods him.
Perhaps this is how the yoke of leadership goes - it never really becomes comfortable. Warrick assumed that time would create a place for him to enjoy his country and his people, but the winged-stallion cannot remember the last time his thoughts were not laced with worry or with business, plagued with burning and distant starlight that still haunts him. It weighs heavy on him, so much so that he would do anything so that none of his followers would see...but Tangerine did. Of course she did. Warrick wonders if she is not only a seer, but a mind-reader as well. She has always been so in tune with his emotions and feelings, that he is sure that some part of her can see right into his soul and interpret things that lay hidden there that even he cannot understand himself.
“Bring me back,” he tells her, nearly a plea as it crosses his lips. There is no soothing explanation that so often comes from him, but a cry for help. Even now, he craves the never-ending plains of her once-visited homeland, where he is nothing but a face in the crowd - where his only duty is to care for her and for her to care for him, and to lay in the sun and swim in the rivers. She is the free spirit - the wanderer - and it is only she who can soothe the ache, satiate the hunger, fill the emptiness. The crown he had always thought he wanted (thought he needed) is now the very thing that is causing him to wither away, crumbling into nothingness beneath its weight. He is tired with the diplomatics and the truces and the politics and the routine of it all.
The king sighs dejectedly, his throat tight with emotion. He’s taken on so much - what a fool would he appear to be if he is just to abandon it? He is stuck, and because of him, so is she. Yet she remains - unwavering and steady as always, even in sadness. He is amazed by her everyday.
“I am not myself anymore,” he confesses feebly, even though she already knows. It is easier to admit, when her heart beats so in time with his own.
Warrick remembers the stars Saedis had shared with him only nights ago, and the moment he saw the stars he knew that something was not sitting right in his soul. And now, Tangerine’s words have spoken to him even more than the stars had done. “Remind me,” he asks, his eyelids fluttering closed over his ocean-eyes.
Warrick
@[Tangerine]
YAY A NOVEL <3