for every tyrant, a tear for the vulnerable
in every lost soul, the bones of a miracle
The air between them crackles as they square off on either side of the stream, it’s a narrow boundary but it is all that keeps them from flying at each other. Kensa imagines that he thinks her the gentle darling she was before he abandoned and attacked her, and she wants to strike him free of that impression. His teeth flash behind his sterling lips and he sounds like a bad actor destroying a play, assigning the wrong emotions to his lines. I wanted to see you.
“I have nothing to hide.” She replies in cold clipped words. His gaze roams but she doesn’t follow it, she’s looking at him hard and long while he examines the meadow for whatever Hildy thought might impress her absent father. How many times she traced her lips over the angles of that face, pressed her forehead into the the fall of that mane. They are both homesick for the things right in front of them.
Litotes turns back to her and she remembers him differently than he is, recognizes and mourns the melancholy boy from the lake who does and does not live in the man before her. Her features turn impassive and distant. The Lion-man tells her he misses her, and she wants to break because she believes while wondering if she hates him.
She should want to be away from him, and she could be with just one step into that trickle of water. Her body is traitorous. She is accustomed to this at least as it pertains to the lust (the tightly coiled need to inflict violence is not so familiar), but every emotion is rebelling as well. As much as Kensa wants to be repulsed and reject Litotes she cannot. He is so close, and she cannot reason how it would be wrong to cross that water and let him fuck her. Afterward she could banish him from Hyaline forever, because there is no way this goes beyond that.
...but she misses him too.
Who is Valek’s father?” Kensa tilts her head slightly, metallic freckles catching the light, eyes narrowing a protective and confused fraction. She considers asking why it matters, spitting at him that he doesn’t know them, or worse cutting him with a lie: I don’t know. It isn’t in her though. Oh she would happily hurt him, but she will not be dishonest with him. “Ivar. In Ischia.” There is no softness in the words, she is not ashamed, nor does she temper what guesses will be a blow with any apologetic looks. The men in her life seem expect that her pleasure seeking will extend only so far as is chaste. Her unions with the others were never to hurt Litotes but to please herself. “I have no ties to him beyond the boy.” In the void that follows those words she should tell him she loves him but she can’t. She shouldn’t love him anymore.
“What else do you want to know?” She asks, silvery voice glacial and then shakes her head, taking the question back. “No. No, you don’t get to know anything else. Believe whatever Brunhilde told you. You’ve had your own secrets for more than a year now. It’s only fair that I keep some of my own.” He couldn’t know how she’d been treated, accused of concealing his plans, left reeling and alone. Of course he does know what happened after that.
“I don’t owe you anything.” Kensa steps into the stream, the rounded pebbles clattering against her hooves as the water rushes past. She is smaller than Lie, and so much more delicate in appearance than she’d been before the plague. The corona of heat off of his gleaming hide meets her when she stops almost chest to chest with him, daring him to hurt her again like he had on the day that had torn them apart.
@[litotes]
