Some are fearful of the night.
Eilidh isn’t. She knows better than most that danger doesn’t fear the daylight, either.
The night was Moselle’s favourite, and so it became hers - her light in the darkness, in a strange twist of irony. So when he comes she doesn’t shy away, even though her eyes are closed and the sounds of his moving wings are lost by the faint trickle of moving water, lazy though it is. She’s counting the freckles like stars in galaxies that ran along the tops of her mother’s cheekbones, to see if she can still conjure them exactly. She does so often, closes her eyes and wills the lines of Moselle’s face to come to life against the backs of her eyelids.
If she’d been looking, Eilidh would have admired how weightless he had seemed in flight. And now that she is blinking her eyes open again and can see that his wings are strong and wild, she will covet them discreetly. She’s always had a gravity to her; a quiet soberness, that draws her mouth and dark eyes into only straight lines and fragile smiles. She wouldn’t realize that they are both missing something tonight.
He tells her she looks cold, and while she offers a meek smile in response she’s wondering, fleetingly, if he can see inside of her, past the flesh and fat, between her bones and to the middle of her marrow - if he knew that at first it had felt like half of herself was missing, and that she’d thought for longer than she’d ever admit aloud about burying herself next to her mother - that the months fell away from her like petals off wildflowers afterwards.
“It’s not so bad,” she says, lying through her teeth because it could be. It could eat you alive, if you let it.
“You’re numb before too long.”
Then, she stops to reflect on whether or not she is still talking about water. For the first time in hours, Eilidh pauses in consideration of the feel of her own body. The truth was that she hadn’t felt physically cold tonight, not with the warm summer wind teasing her flaxen mane, not with the peace of nighttime all around her. Inside was a different matter altogether.
“I’m Eilidh,” she says, before his x-ray eyes could see her truths again.
“Am I in your way?”
⤜ nobody's watching, drowning in words so sweet ⤛
@[Lydia] <333333