DESPOINA
She has never thought of her name as pretty. Never considered it as anything but the despondent howl of a young girl without a name. A placeholder for what should have been bestowed upon her by a loving mother. It was an eternal reminder that she had to carry the weight of something given to herself. Something that she had whispered in secret in the den when the faeries were not around.
It was a badge that she carried—the weight of her lonely existence.
Such things do not come to her lips though. Such things live in the base of her belly, curled in her chest like some hopeless secret, and she hopes that they do not stain her depthless eyes as she tilts her head back to consider him. “It is a name,” she responds, almost dryly, and she wonders if she has somehow managed to pick up on the humor of those around her. It feels unlikely, she knows. After all, the very thing—this humor—rattles around her and falls away as quickly as she had been able to hold onto it.
He closes the distance between them and she feels the hound within her respond. It bristles in response, a need to shelter, and her entire coat shifts in a wave. The blue shifts to the endless black and then fades back to blue as she settles once more. She adjusts her weight, hoping that he had somehow missed the change, and settles her weight, squaring her shoulders. She would not run away—not now.
His words cut to the very core of her and she cannot keep it from her face. Cannot keep the truth of it from pulling at the corner of her mouth as she angles her head away, breaking the eye contact so that she can look toward the ground. “I have felt the absence,” she says, her voice soft. “And the quiet—the empty—is so much worse than anything that you could ever be.” She glances back up, holding her breath, before exhaling and rolling her shoulders. “So much worse than even I could ever be.”
I guess the sound of your voice in the aching will just have to do