09-27-2020, 01:03 AM
── and i was never sure whether you were the lighthouse or the storm ──
She is relieved when Echis at last relaxes into her touch, and she lowers a haloed head to press her pale lips to her daughter’s brow. She is not always a very good mother because she is selfish; easily distracted. She can remember finding a young Cassian and Casimira that had gone looking for her when they felt she was gone for too long. She remembers how Evenstar had gone from delighting at her returns, to building walls instead to prepare for her sure departures. She has seen disappointment on her children’s faces countless times, and never is it enough to make her stay.
She is not always a good mother, but she loved her children infinitely, in all the broken ways that she knows how.
She can feel the way Echis’s coat grows beneath her healing touch and though this brings some relief, she is not entirely satisfied. She can feel that there are parts of her that her touch cannot reach, the parts that only time can heal, and the parts that might never heal.
Mindlessly, she traces her nose down her neck, and then her shoulder, frowning at the feel of the scratches that were left rough and ragged across her skin. The marks feel foreign, and even without her eyes she recognizes that they are strange, but she does not ask Echis about them.
It is not until she feels the mark across her throat that she stops.
She cannot explain the warmth that jumps to meet her lips, nor the way the mark tastes of familiarity. She does not know why his face flashes instantly across her mind, and her expression transforms from concerned to thoughtful, her lips still tracing the length of it, mindful enough to at least be gentle at the newness of it. It feels almost fresh, and it makes her own throat burn at the memory it evokes. This cut felt clean, almost methodical; nothing like the way he had ripped her own throat, and she does not know why there is an echo of a smile on her lips. “Carnage,” she says his name on a whisper, mostly to herself. “That’s who you were with,” and her chest tightens in that strange way she doesn’t have a name for, the way it does when she thinks of him.
But when she finally pulls away from her daughter it is like she wakes from her dream-like state, her voice anchored back to the present when she tells her gently, “If you ever hear him call for you again, don’t go.” Another soft touch to her cheek, the sunlight glinting off the gemstones that have settled into her hollowed sockets. “You are replaceable to him, but not to me.”
She is not always a good mother, but she loved her children infinitely, in all the broken ways that she knows how.
She can feel the way Echis’s coat grows beneath her healing touch and though this brings some relief, she is not entirely satisfied. She can feel that there are parts of her that her touch cannot reach, the parts that only time can heal, and the parts that might never heal.
Mindlessly, she traces her nose down her neck, and then her shoulder, frowning at the feel of the scratches that were left rough and ragged across her skin. The marks feel foreign, and even without her eyes she recognizes that they are strange, but she does not ask Echis about them.
It is not until she feels the mark across her throat that she stops.
She cannot explain the warmth that jumps to meet her lips, nor the way the mark tastes of familiarity. She does not know why his face flashes instantly across her mind, and her expression transforms from concerned to thoughtful, her lips still tracing the length of it, mindful enough to at least be gentle at the newness of it. It feels almost fresh, and it makes her own throat burn at the memory it evokes. This cut felt clean, almost methodical; nothing like the way he had ripped her own throat, and she does not know why there is an echo of a smile on her lips. “Carnage,” she says his name on a whisper, mostly to herself. “That’s who you were with,” and her chest tightens in that strange way she doesn’t have a name for, the way it does when she thinks of him.
But when she finally pulls away from her daughter it is like she wakes from her dream-like state, her voice anchored back to the present when she tells her gently, “If you ever hear him call for you again, don’t go.” Another soft touch to her cheek, the sunlight glinting off the gemstones that have settled into her hollowed sockets. “You are replaceable to him, but not to me.”
ryatah
@[echis]