06-26-2019, 02:03 PM
i've never cared for anyone so much
i was born with a bomb inside my gut
He smiles and it shifts something vital in that gaping cavern of her chest.
It stirs something at the corners of her mouth so that she’s almost smiling, too.
But even given the strange configuration of his face, his is more convincing.
She decides that she likes his smile and the way his light shines from the very center of him. She likes that he makes no attempt to smother his delight. It’s refreshing, she decides, after years spent skirting past all those creatures who kept their eyes downcast and their mouths decidedly stagnant. She is one of them, she thinks, and wonders what it might take to turn herself into someone who more closely resembles him. She wonders what it might be like to feel such unfettered enthusiasm.
Her name sounds different coming out of his mouth. The only other tongue that had taken its shape had belonged to her father and he’s been gone so long now that she cannot remember the sound of his voice.
Her smile deepens, ties up the corners of her mouth when he shares his name in turn. “Velkan,” she echoes, testing the shape of it. She likes the way it cuts a crease down the center of her tongue. She tilts her perfectly ordinary head with his question.
Her focus alights then on the flowers. She has never paid them much mind, certainly has never poured her whole soul into them the way he seems to. She deliberates a long moment, her gaze flitting between the long-stemmed things and the stark black color of him. And then she dips her head and gingerly, just as carefully as he had though noticeably more clumsy, takes up the brightest yellow flower she can find in the immediate vicinity.
She does not tuck it into his forelock, for she does not believe herself capable of fitting her mouth into the space between his antlers. So, she draws herself nearer to his side and tucks it into his mane. She does not allow herself to linger, immediately casts herself away from him.
“It’s bright,” she says by way of explanation, “like you.”
