Its lovely to meet you, too.
Her lips are stained red, Eilidh notes, trying to imagine that it isn’t blood that’s forged the striking gradient that bleeds out from the centre of her companion’s lips until it fades away, soft and fragile, entirely. It’s beautiful, she thinks without wanting to acknowledge it, as though she’d been dining on cherries and beetroots instead of dying. She looks away then, because there is something confronting about her red wine lips and there are quiet parts of Eilidh that are still trying, desperately and perhaps in vain, to patch holes in the name of keeping a sinking ship afloat.
Luckily, they are helped along somewhat, because in the next moment Ryatah presses those same red lips against Eilidh’s neck and instead of hyperfocusing on the fragile, cherry coloured mark she’d leave there on her skin long after she moved away Eilidh instead is thinking of her mother and all of the ways she used to feel just like this. She forgets the blood, lets the red drain away like the last of the sunlight at nightfall, and leans in against her lips. She closes her eyes, and for a single fraction of a single second, it feels like finding home again.
Of course it doesn’t last.
And as Ryatah pulls away, Eilidh’s eyes flutter open again to meet her companion’s face.
Beqanna has seen times worse than this plague, believe it or not. There are always those strong enough to pull the lands from the darkness.
She believes.
Even as the world falls apart around them. Even as her own body turns to rot in the wake of the contagion — she believes. Eilidh can tell by the way her lips curl into a smile, fragile and wistful though it may be.
You’ll see.
But with her bleeding hips against these thorns, and with every rib in her body threatening to burst forth through her skin, and the coughs that split her like earthquakes, it’s hard to imagine anything other than this colourless (save for red, of course) life; void of substance, void of promise, void of life. Moselle could have saved them, she thinks. Her mother had always known what to do.
“Have you seen much of Beqanna over the years?”
The words have escaped her lips before she can interpret them as rude. Once they’re out, however, Eilidh looks away in momentary embarrassment before continuing:
“Forgive me, I don’t mean to pry. I wondered, I guess, if you would have known my mother. You remind me of her, in some small way.”
⤜ nobody's watching, drowning in words so sweet ⤛
@[Ryatah]