makai
What they have is beautiful, but it is impossible.
They both know that—have always known that.
It is an impossible dream, an impossible love; one bought and paid for with their blood, their anguish. He still pays sometimes, he thinks. When he wakes up and feels that fear crawl across the back of his mind. When he looks at her and thinks about how much better she would be if he had not caught her in his web. What if she had found a simpler love? What if one of those honey-tongued stallions of wheat had found her and loved her right? Would she be happier if she did not have to love someone like him?
He had to imagine that she would—and that knowledge sometimes felt like it would kill him.
But not tonight. Not when the morning sun washes over her curves and angles so beautifully; not when he can smell the wine of her breath on the breeze. Right now, in this moment, the rest melts away and leaves them together in the simplicity of their love. Softened by time. Perfected by age. So he just reaches down and rests his mouth against her flesh, tangling with her surely and deftly, their bodies settling against one another with the wisdom and memory of the years spent together. He thinks he would never forget it.
“Aye,” he murmurs, his dark eyes brightening with the memory. It was not a particularly good one—not the full width of it—but it was when he focused on her. He had been running, similarly to how he had run this morning. But his demons had been there that morning. Behind his every step. He had run until his lungs had ached and he could barely draw breath, his nostrils flaring and body drenched.
His nerves had been on fire, his veins threatening to split him apart, and she had smelled of the Chamber. He had collided with her before he had even had a chance to see what or who she was. His mouth had been fervent on her neck, drinking her in—intoxicated with the pine and the fog curling around her mane—and then with the sweetness of her flesh beneath it. He had been drunk on her, and lost before he had even had a chance to right himself. His chest constricted in his chest at the memory of it.
“How could I forget that moment?” His mouth wandered up her neck to her jaw, lingering there, pressing the velvet of his nose into the softness to drink her in. “It was the moment that I was born.”
The moment that his life, his true life, began.
you're the fire and the flood
and I'll always feel you in my blood
