lepis, comtesse of taiga
RUN AND TELL ALL OF THE ANGELS; THIS COULD TAKE ALL NIGHT
i think i need a devil to help me get things right
Lepis is reluctant to let go. She does eventually, but it is slowly, and she her expression is wistful as she nods agreement. Always too long. So long that she had not even known Noah had found someone she was even interested in having children with, that Noah had time to raise what looks to be nearly a yearling. Forgetting the Pampas had never been her intention, and she worries it has seemed that way, that she had forgotten her friend. Noah has been a fixture in a great portion of Lepis’ life and the dun mare does wish that she lived nearer, that she were not so devoted to her pampas flowers.
Her leaning in is a half-second delayed mirror of the roan’s. Little ears are always listening when one thinks they are focused elsewhere. She still remembers the colorful words that Pteron had come back with after following his father and Vulgaris on a patrol around Loess. But what Noah says first is nothing to be whispered, and Lepis almost starts to pull away until she realizes that the roan mare has more to say, more to ask.
Tell her what’s happened? That would take more time than it would for the tobiano filly to taste every bit of moss in sight, Lepis thinks. Tell her what has happened? Where should she begin?
Nowhere, it seems.
The crunch of feet on snow has her puling away from Noah, her pale eyes flicking across the shadowy woods as her navy nostrils flare. There – a deer. It leaps toward them, uncharacteristically determined, and Lepis has almost begun to frown when it changes in mid-leap. At take-off: a buck in its prime, and at landing: the husband she thought long gone.
Her emotions have been slipping back in one at a time, slower than ever before. Only the worst of them too: sadness, fear, loss, worry. They found each crack in her defense, shoved their way in and ballooned until she was left no choice but to collapse on Noah’s shoulder immediately after the other woman’s arrival. Lepis has not given up hope that the others will return in time, and yet she had never imagined they would all return quite so suddenly the moment she meets his eye.
His silhouette is markedly different without the wings, but Wolfbane is still without a doubt the most handsome man that Lepis has ever seen. The rush of emotion, of every emotion, bring with them memories that change him in front her eyes in a way quite different from his shifting. Concentration brings with it a braid in his tail that she and Gale and Marni had spent quite some time puzzling out. . Shock carries with it the light in his eye as he’d explained that their son would probably become visible again before his first birthday. Envy is the way the muscles in his neck flex at the end of a perfectly executed aerial spiral that even attempting make her terribly dizzy.
There is no emotion without some bit of Wolfbane attached to it, not even the heartbreak that shines from her own face when brushes against her. It is the pain in his eyes that stills her tongue. That was missing before. Anger, bitterness, and disappointment had been there, but not pain. The breath she takes in is shaky, but the second one quivers less, and the third barely at all. From bleakness to everything all at once; maintaining balance is all she can do. She can’t summon a smile at his jest, at least she doesn’t frown.
She definitely does not pull away from the soft pressure on her sky-blue feathers. She presses back, just before he pulls away, but looks back at Noah
“I was about to tell her I was thinking of moving back to Loess.” Lepis lies. She means it to come off confidently, as though this is not a momentous decision. Instead, she finds herself looking toward Wolfbane, searching those shifter’s eyes as though she might pry his response from him unspoken. Is this good, she is too proud to ask? Is this what he wants? Will this make the pain leave his eyes?
|
