“Maybe I like boring.” She is quick to quip back at him, but there is new light blossoming in the bottoms of those beautiful, tropic eyes, a smile she tries to bite back between gentle teeth. “I definitely like sleep, and dreams.” But he is so different than she is. He is so wild and free like the birds that spill in irregular patterns against the dawn sky, and she is like the ripples on the waters surface, pushed whichever way the wind blows, wherever the current may take her.
She is happy to be led, so maybe it is good that he is happy to lead.
That they are so different, and yet same. Whole, together.
She laughs at the mischief in his smile - and it is her favorite smile of his, so reflexive and lopsided, making his eyes bright and twinkling when they flash in her direction. It is a smile that promises fun, promises laughter until her sides hurt with it, adventures that she can fill her dreams with at night. It is a smile that makes her forget it hurts now to run like this, hurts to go on these adventures.
His nose touches her shoulder, and she grins back at him, lengthening her stride just as pushes ahead to unfurl his beautiful wings. They are enormous, the feathers flat and serrated, ready to carry him into the sky just as soon as he asks them to. The first time he tries though, it is only for a moment before his heels hit the ground again, and it is only the sound of his rumbling laughter that soothes the worry that had flared in her chest for just a moment.
Then he’s off again, digging in and throwing them wide, and she cheers when the wind catches him this time, pulling him forward across a world he must always feel so trapped by. She is glad for his wings, glad for the freedom they offer him. But she worries that he won’t want to - no, not want, she worries that he’ll feel like he can’t go far, can’t see a world that she can’t come see with him. She’d had two twin nubs appear on her brow like he had, the soft, new promise of antlers like their mother. But nothing had ever appeared on her shoulders, no wings to give her a sky to explore. The wolves would always keep her trapped here, and she would always keep her brother trapped here.
But right now when it’s just the two of them, okay, fine, just the two of them and pack of wolves slinking through the nearest shadows, it is easy to forget everything but the wild beauty of the boy who can defy gravity, gliding on ahead of her. Easy to just ignore the ache in her delicate body as she digs into the soft ground and lengthens her strides to follow him.
i am brambles but i am tangled in your love