05-28-2018, 02:12 PM
”Wishbone” breathed the shadows, to the ears of trees and foliage; but he lost their answer to mute wind, who carries all voices to her collection, at the fraying edge of the world. Again, he tried; and he told them without mouth of the way her skin was coated in the loving flames of dying day, and how her childish curls had quivered like young, copper bells in a church tower, and whether it is fate or luck – the sound of footfalls had him turn abruptly in a swirl of leaf laughter and waving fronds. His heels seemed slow and sluggish; his legs, heavy and indolent.
He blinks at this ghost of a girl – admiring the way her soft-spun hair frames her face, the confident swing and sway of her hip, and for a moment that stretches wide and thin into eternity that is all he can bring himself to do. It is a distraction that far too often travels down the length of his back (deceitfully strong and nevertheless swaying underneath the weight of his amphora of uncertainties), where he is rendered mute and paralyzed – a puerile ghost that shadows him as relentlessly as the wolf once did.
Ever so slowly, cautiously, the oddity of a smile crosses his lips and it coils on the tip of his tongue to bedew it with the words he struggles to find. It is rare, this thing that crawls and conquers his face like a thousand armies – you see, however many smiles that cracks the silence of his slightly roman-nosed face into brightness, this peculiar confection falls off him loosely and with the ease he so struggles to understand. It is a smile that articulates auburn-warmth on its own, beyond insecurities and silences that last through centuries.
”Khaedrik” she whispers to his ear and her silver-bell laugh sends a shiver down his spine. She is, he realizes as he fumbles through the closed doors of his mind, a creature that he will never come to wholly understand; the smile remains – so why is it then that he longs to sift through the passageways and pearl-white gateways of her?
He could love her, the thought is like dammed floodwaters rushing through his mind; asphyxiating and froth-tongued. But to him, the thought (however frightening, that he cannot deny) is anything but disturbing.
And so Khaedrik finds himself, still muted by the archaic notions that tangle in the musky earth-colors of her mane, rendered cautious enough to harness his curiosity. Momentarily.
”I did melt into the shadows” he finally answers, somberness contained in a murmuring, decorous softness. The surface is polished and polite, mastered in mirror-like restrictions. Still, the smile is there and it grows exponentially to contaminate the strange shadow-lands of his face with gold-glow and curiosity, he slips from precision and admits without afterthought: ”But they spat me back out, I don´t belong there” but the shadows still cling to him like a spider´s web – as if to contradict the words that fall so carelessly from his lips. He falls silent then – a pause and a flutter; ”I came to see you”
The silence is broken and they stand, boy (foreign and wayward), girl (earth-bound and ethereal), boy, girl and smile. And for a moment it is as it should be. He is relieved, thankful to find that she has come to meet him – and wordlessly, pensively, with boyish glee flickering in the shadow-brightness of his eyes he takes a step closer as if to share some dangerous secret.
He observes her in wonder, contemplates these peculiar things, and is no more than boy. Boy and content for the first time in centuries. Even so, she is still a shadow that frightens him (not as much now as moments ago, true) and he hesitates; the shadow-master wonders (silly and reduced to mere laughter) if he will ever dare to lean closer and leave the wraith-like warmth of his breath somewhere underneath her withers.
Unfortunately, self-obsessed, uncertain Khaedrik was never one to learn the rules of intimacy. And perhaps he should be thankful?
He cannot think of anything of substance to say but braves the silence (and her) nevertheless, let me ask you, then” his voice travels over his lips in a mere whisper, as though the aforementioned, dangerous secret travels over their seal and into the silence, even more perilous and intriguing. ”What have you been up to since last I saw you?”
@[Wishbone] Sorry for the novel - I just love them together <3