that's all there is
The mare counts breaths, if not seconds; Noah doesn’t count them. She can’t count them, she doesn’t have the focus left. The strange ice-covered mare hadn’t responded verbally to anything, barely responding at all, and the little roan mare doesn’t have the energy to try and actually strike up a conversation. She just lets her nose drop to the ground and listens, each one of his continued breaths reassuring even if she isn’t tracking them. What Noah can hear, this close to him, is that each breath comes easier. Which means that with each breath she relaxes, not quite asleep but not with them either.
Kora’s voice when she greets him is faint and far away, the single syllable making little to no sense. But his reply is closer, and some time in their mutual unconsciousness, she’d collapsed a little against the stallion and so it rumbles through her, drawing her back towards the surface. It enables her to hear the mare’s next words much more clearly, and she’s just blinking green eyes open when the golden face is suddenly much closer to her own. Noah is simply too tired and strangely peaceful to be startled and she blinks again, the words of acknowledgement dying half-formed on her tongue because she’s already gone. It’s abrupt, but almost comforting; Rhonen had done his best to be a good father, but there had been many times when he was a silent and brooding presence more than anything else.
Noah feels the rumble milliseconds before she hears him speak again, and she forces herself to roll back fully upright, not wanting to burden him with supporting a stranger as well as his own healing body. “You don’t owe me,” she is whispering now, not even almost-whispering, drawing each word from the dark depths of her brain. It comes easier, as she wakes, but her voice only rises a few decibels to it’s ‘normal’ quiet. “It’s just nice to be able to do something to help.” She doesn’t comment on the last bit; they both felt how close it was, and she’s not entirely comfortable with it.
He asks if she’s alright; she summons a smile for him. “Just tired. I’ll be okay,” she puts as much confidence into the words as she can; she doesn’t want him to worry when he should be focused on getting better. In truth, she doesn’t know how long it will take her to recover; she’s only driven the plague for a few who were much less ill, and she’s never felt like this before. She’s ready to brush off his next assertion, because she’s not surprised at this point that she feels familiar to him – it was necessarily an invasive thing, chasing the illness around inside of him, and she feels strongly that brushing a part of her being against a part of him will leave an impression.
But when he utters her father’s name, Noah freezes completely. She doesn’t even breath for several moments too long, caught in what she remembers. Which isn’t much; individual faces are mostly a blur, with a few notable exceptions. She doesn’t pick Leander’s face out of her blurred memories, but she knows she wouldn’t, not for sure; she doesn’t recognize most of them. She was shy beforehand, but never quite knowing whether someone was a stranger or might have helped murder the only person that had mattered to her made her even more cautious.
One can only hold their breath for so long; when she runs out of air she gasps in new oxygen, but even that is quiet, restrained. The little mare lifts her gaze to his again, searching, but she doesn’t see anything threatening. He still feels safe to her, and they’ve spent a profound time together, even if it was short. Perhaps he was one of the ones who was trying to stand against the mob, though she’s still chewing on the faint confusion that the name seems to mean something to him, beyond just some person who’d been murdered to start the plague. “He’s my father,” she mumbles at last, and then a painful, “was my father.”
noah
@[Leander] No, I love it <3 <3 <3