let your fists come undone; mandan

[exist]

while collecting the stars, I connected the dots.
I don’t know who I am, but now I know who I’m not.

She catches it too, that familiar musk. More than damp earth and deep forest, more than the cloy of leaf cover underfoot. Her breath catches in her chest, frozen and still and trapped inside a body that has suddenly forgotten how to work. There is a beat where she does not do anything more than stand there - nothing more than close her eyes and breath it in for the peace it brings her, for the ache it unfurls in her chest like a dark flower born to wither. It more than reminds her of him, it is him, just exactly as she remembers him in her dreams.

Three, four, five seconds she waits for it to fade, waits for the absence of him to undo her again as it has so many days and so many nights before. But the scent lingers. It tangles in her mane and settles in the copper curves of her body, traces the edge of each serrated feather before coming to rest against her skin. "Mandan." She breathes, she breaks, she closes herself off to the ache of him not beside her.

But there is an echo that answers her, an echo in the gravel of his voice (she'd know it anywhere). Exist. Except echoes are for repeating, for mimicking, and that is not the word she spoke.

Those wild emerald eyes fly open, her wings serrating along the edges as they try to understand the rush of adrenaline that pours through her trembling body. "Mandan." She says, so soft and so hoarse, his name a familiar prayer on her lips. He is almost exactly as she remembers, dark and so wild, so beautiful - though, older now, just as she is. But he is the same, he is her Mandan, and she cannot help the quiet smile that etches itself across her mouth when she notices the surly way he scowls at her. Except something is wrong, because he darkens, goes so faded and weary at the edges when all he should be focused on feeling is the heat of her skin beneath his wandering lips.

You're not real. You're not really here.

She is frozen now, fighting to unravel the wild threads of thought that are suddenly tangling in her mind. His name is on her lips again, aching to beckon him closer, to press kisses to his nose and his jaw and the hard line of that beautiful, wild face. Mandan. But all she can do is watch with those emerald-bright eyes as he takes one step to close the distance between them, slow enough for her heart to live and die a thousand aching uncertainties in her chest. Another, and she finds she can hardly bear it.

Are you real? With his lips pulled back in that snarl she remembers so well.

"Are you?" The question is so soft, just the whisper of her wings as they soften and fold to her sides again. But she isn't waiting for him to say, isn't waiting for him to understand this madness he has found in the agony of her absence. "I am real." She closes the distance between them in just a few strides, doesn't pause to give him time to push her away, to tell her no. She is so selfish, so greedy to feel his skin beneath her lips again, to trace the lines on his chest all the way down to the heart that beats inside, a sound so familiar it might break her.

"My Mandan." She says, so gentle and so possessive, ducking her head beneath his neck as she comes to lean against his beating chest. Her lips lift to his chin, touch those dark whiskers and the velvet of the skin beneath, shift higher to trace up along his jaw. He is so much the same - wilder, perhaps more wicked now, but each touch is a memory, the scent of him so familiar. She closes her eyes, rubs the side of her indigo muzzle against the curve of that dark jaw, settles more deeply against him as though it will be enough to turn back time to a point where he might’ve loved her if only she had insisted.

She knows better now, knows what it is to be without him. Knows that it feels like a waste of a life to spend it wanting. “Stay with me.” The words are so soft, as fragile as spun silk, unraveling the moment they’ve left the safety of her mouth. She hesitates, opens her eyes again to touch her lips to the corner of his mouth, to taste the weariness he keeps so well buried in the hollow of his bones and pull it free, to push life back inside him with only a faint flicker of blue between their skin to indicate anything is happening at all. “I don’t want to miss you anymore.” Just a whisper, but she presses it like a kiss to the soft of that weary mouth.

Exist

@[mandan]