She studies him back, but her expression remains soft and open, her eyes so gentle despite the rings of molten fire dancing around dark irises. “I’ve never experienced heartbreak.” She tells him, and there is suddenly a new kind of warmth dancing in those sunfire eyes, a mischievousness that pulls at the corners of her dark, delicate mouth. “I’ve also yet to be stabbed.” She is seeking to coax something lighter from him, a smile or a gentling of those ancient eyes so full of what she can only assume is a pain he’s learned to bury deep and live with. “But I can imagine how different those would be from one another.” Her voice softens, and instead of pulling him out of the dark she finds herself sinking into those depths with him.
She is glad to discover it is not a terrible place to be, that he is not terrible company to keep.
“I can’t even imagine what it would be like to see the heart of Beqanna.” She tells him, though her mind is already drifting, already trying to imagine the weight of such a moment. He must feel some kind of bond to her, and if not a bond then certainly a responsibility. She blinks, and there is a new kind of sorrow in her face, but pain is so strange in the way it makes broken things beautiful. “Will you tell me that story? I would love to know it.” To know his story, his pain, his love. To know the history of the world around her, a secret one hidden away in a past she does not know well enough.
She is quiet for a moment when he speaks again, her cheek still against the warm pewter of his shoulder. She cannot even fathom the worries his mind is likely collecting, the scenarios that unfold in his thoughts when there is only the dark to keep him company. “Do you have guesses?” She asks, and her voice is something of a whisper because she cannot decide if it is cruel to ask him to voice the things that likely weigh heaviest on his heart. “Do you think she will ever be strong enough to hold the light in again?” This question more selfish, though she hopes he will not hold it against her.
She feels him shift and she thinks it must be to pull away, a thing she does not begrudge him, but then his lips are against her brow with a gentle kind of warmth that feels like a glimpse of home and she cannot help the way she leans into him for just a heartbeat in wordless gratitude. Her eyes open, soft and warm and entirely like molten fire, and she is surprised to find the smile waiting on his lips. There is something about the curve of it that chases away the shadows from his silver eyes.
Ten.
It is a strange kind of name, but she doesn’t not even question it when it belongs to someone like him.
Vast and quiet and full of secrets he does not mean to keep.
She reaches out gently to touch her nose to his, and her breath is a warm exhalation of summer grass and sunshine in this strange, lonely evernight. “It’s very nice to meet you, Ten.” A smile, small and quiet like she cannot help but to savor the way his name feels on her tongue. “My name is Aureline.”
aureline
dear wilderness, be at your best
her armor is thin as the fabric of her dress
@[Ten]