etro --
in the hushing dusk, under a swollen silver moon,
I came walking with the wind to watch the cactus bloom
She cannot help but think of him. She had told him she would, and she had not lied. He permeated her thoughts, and she did not try to stop him from living there; in fact, she often welcomed him. When the night began to steal upon the land, and when her mind slowed to a lazy crawl, she would close her eyes and fall victim to his memory. Sometimes, it was a cutting, vicious memory. Other times, it was a slow, smoldering one. Either way, he was everywhere, and she had no defense against him. She never did. She never would.
Perhaps it is this that drives her from her usual haunt to a nearby forest. Perhaps it is this that causes her to follow paths unmarked, unknown, the trail virgin to pressure of weight. Her nose drops to the ground and she moves without planning, meandering as the silver light of the moon washes down on her plain body.
She had never been particularly beautiful (not that she had ever truly begrudged the narrowness of her hips, the muddiness of her eyes, the stockiness of her head), and, truthfully, he had never made her feel beautiful. Instead, he had made her feel powerful. He had made her feel otherworldly. When his knife-sharp body was near her (smoldering, a promise of flames smothered in her presence), she had felt nebulas that expanded in her chest and constellations that exploded in her veins. She had felt more alive when she rested her cheek against his neck than she had ever felt before or after—had felt more aware of every inch of her flesh in his presence, the flames licking up her sides and igniting her in ways she could not articulate.
But, eventually, that had quietly died.
His flat shark-eyes had not rested on her but shifted to the rustling bushes nearby, and she had not questioned his motive. From the first meeting (even then, always smelling of life taken), she had known who and what he was—and she had never minded. She had never questioned. She had never asked for him to change or wondered what drove him, and it did not cross her mind to think about what that made her.
Thus, she could not say that she had been surprised when she saw that shift within him (minor and yet monumental—tectonic plates moving her entire world). She was not surprised, but she mourned all the same. When his gaze had shifted, she had known that he could never love her the way she needed. It had clicked as surely as the moment when she had realized that she did love him—loved him in the way that the moon is meant to love the sun, forever chasing and never obtaining. She had studied him, pressing his memory close into the folds of her heart, and then exhaled him—freeing him into the wild.
On most days, his absence is bearable. It is an absence born of necessity; an absence born of universal truths. But, tonight, it is heavy, and she feels the gravity of it pulling her down into the earth. She walks slowly, graceful despite her physical shortcomings into the alien part of Beqanna. When she reaches a small clearing, surrounding by the saplings and the oaks with intertwining branches, she comes to a stop almost without realizing it. She does not lift her head, and she does not make a noise. Instead, she closes her eyes and listens to the wind moving around her—thinking perhaps the same wind moved around him, too.
Tonight, that was enough. It had to be.
-- vanquish and yael's trait-negating desert princess --
@[Kingslay]