Part of her is surprised to find him here.
Or, rather, for him to find her.
She is surprised that there are still parts of her to be found. Surprised by the endless ability of her body to fall apart and then stick itself together again. Remade from ash every time and remaking itself in the image of itself. So close and yet distorted. A mirror that never quite matches up to the original. She wonders if one day she will no longer be able to recognize her own face.
Would she recognize it now?
It is the dilemma of a girl who shifts more often than not. Who has twice died and been reborn. A body that is never quite home and a heart that instead serves as her anchor. Beating, bastard thing that it is.
He comes and she feels it thump again, painfully as though bruised, and she lifts her dual-colored eyes to study him cautiously. “I did,” she says, wondering what about him feels so different. How he feels there and yet not, pulled back behind some shadows she cannot see reaching toward him.
There is a frown that pulls delicately at her lips, plucking at the soft skin, but she doesn’t move away from the alien touch—from the way that he stands next to her with his wing draped over her back just so.
“I am sorry to hear that,” and she’s surprised to find that part of her believes it. That this man who she had hissed at and scorned. Spat at his feet. The man who had ripped her body to shreds and then gifted her a kingdom would elicit such a reaction in her, but she cannot help but mourn the dragon.
The man whose shadow cast so long.
“I don’t need protecting,” she finally answers, angling her head back up to look at him once more. “I do not mind dying.” A lie, perhaps, but also true enough that she doesn’t flinch when she says it.
“Did some piece of you die, Yadigar?”
I want to swim until we both begin to feel the weightlessness sink in