[private] putting roots in my dreamland

[isakov]

throw me in the water, don’t think about the splash i will create
leave me at the altar, knowing all the things you just escaped

He believes that it must be fate that pulls them back together.
Because they had met in the meadow and now here she is in the forest.

It is the fireflies that catch his golden eye, draw him further into the underbrush. He has always been so intrigued by the things that make their own light. A curse, perhaps. Some kind of defect in the hardwiring of his brain.

And yet.
The fireflies draw him back to her and he recognizes her with a sort of breathless wonder, his gaze softening as he remembers. Remembers what she had admitted to him in the meadow, what she had told him about the quiet and her mother’s sadness. And he feels some distant pang in his chest as he studies her.

They are older now than they had been then, if only just barely. There is enough of a difference that he takes note of it, but does not dwell on it.

“Avelina,” he murmurs, tilting his head a fraction with a slanted smile. He speaks her name as if his tongue had been made to curl around its shape. He reaches out to her then, without hesitation, and gently bumps her shoulder.

“Here I am, ruining your quiet again,” he continues, something vaguely teasing in his tone. “Though you have new friends, I see.” He nods then to the flurry of fireflies that hover around her with that same soft smile.

isakov

@[Avelina]