I never cared for anyone so much. I was born with a bomb inside my gut.
Lilian has never loved anyone.
Barring, of course, her father.
And she’s not certain that she loves Velkan, but she’s confident that she could.
It is not a romantic love, but rather the kind of love that makes her glad to be alive. Because she has a friend and he is beautiful in his strangeness and he is kind despite all of his darkness. And he coaxes laughter out of the very center of her and his smile, peculiar as it is, makes her believe in the good in the world. Because when she listens to him speak, her heart swells until it dams up her throat and she can hardly breathe around it.
She laughs out loud when he speaks of scales, reaches out to tickle her neck, and it feels like coming to life. She instinctively bends away from him, though her feet remain planted and she does not cast herself out of this secret circle they have created for themselves.
The laughter fades but her smile remains as he regales her with the story of his butterfly and her brow furrows in confusion. “They do?” she asks and exhales a last breath of the remnants of her laughter, though she doesn’t suppose she knows what else they’d eat. To be honest, she has never given it much thought. Before she met him, she never paid them much mind at all. She knows that, when they part ways again, she’ll look for them everywhere now. She’ll look for the ones that are as big as her face so she can tell him about them, too.
He goes quiet and something twists in her chest as he brings his mouth to rest in the tangles of her mane. She reaches for him then, presses her nose gingerly against the swell of his breast in a way she hopes might offer him some comfort.
She remembers what he’d told her about his mothers and the frown that passes over her face now draws a much deeper, more troubled furrow in her brow. She edges closer, lifts her own head to pull him into a hug. She pulls him as close as she can, which admittedly isn’t very.
“I’m sorry,” she says, because she doesn’t know what else to say. She drags in a shuddering breath and holds onto him hard and fast. “I’ll keep you safe,” she whispers fiercely. An empty promise, certainly, as she is no match for a monster but she believes it in the moment.
lilian
