this brilliant light is brighter than we've known; fenris

[fenris]

well, you and me, we'd run away to be wherever our adventure awaits
and time would be a distant memory, nobody could tell us to stay

It has been years, and part of him is grateful for that.

He is grateful for the distance—in the same way that he is grateful for the open air and the rolling fields. He is grateful to have escaped, to have slithered away from the reaching fingers of her, sticky and intense as she had laid her head against his shoulder. Warning bells had sounded in his head. Alarms had gone off in his veins—a reminder that she was not his. She was not his to want, to hold, to need. He was just a stranger passing in the night, and she was magnetic, the gravity of her pulling him in before he knew it.

So, yes, selfishly, part of him is glad to have escaped that, glad to have escape.

But another—

Oh, another.

Another part of him writhes within him, hungry for a feast that was never his to have. He had grown angry at times and bitter and then apathetic. He had raged at a nameless enemy, furious at himself for getting attached to that doe-eyed girl so easily. It was easier to feel nothing and so he often did. He ignored the dreams that whispered around in the back of his mind, lost himself in long wanderings.

That is, at least, until his long wanderings brought him back here.

He should be surprised that he finds her so quickly, that she finds him, that their paths cross and bombs detonate on his chest. Sand begins to swirl up his legs, not touching him but lacing around his limbs and then climbing up his torso. The last time they had met, he had been powerless but he had dreamt of pouring sand down the throat of those who dared scar her; he had imagined ripping them apart from the inside—painting the world red in the color of them. He had dreamt of it but had been unable to do it.

Now he barely needs to reach to find the power, the desert rising within him like a phoenix.

But it has no target, no antagonist except the strange tightening of his throat.

“Luster,” her name escapes him, his voice strangely husky. He clears his throat and shakes his head, determined to remain stoic in the face of the battering emotion, so quickly flooding him again. “It has been a long time, little bird,” this time, his voice is more casual, his crooked smile charming as he takes a step toward her. The silver and cream of his mane frames a handsome face and he remains several feet from her if only because there is too large a part of him that wants to reach for her and pull her close.

well, I've been dreaming ever since I've seen your heaven when you came my way