06-30-2021, 11:02 AM
selaphiel
He is not so young anymore, Selaphiel. (Was he ever all that young?)
It means something that they were friends the last time they saw each other, that they walked together in the sun and she told him the truth and now they stand on two separate sides of this clearing and look at each other and seconds pass and pass and pass and neither of them says anything.
He cannot sense her rage but he knows that something has changed because she does not smile at him. She does not move to swallow up all the space between them and he does not either and this is how he knows that something has changed.
(And still the pressure in his chest builds as the two of them look at each other across all that distance. Separate but together. Bound by the fact that he had not been able to save her.)
And then, finally, she moves. He would not have asked it of her but she comes anyway, Maze. (Or is it Mazikeen?) He does not flinch, though the pressure in his chest is nearly unbearable by the time she reaches him. (He should have saved her. He should have stopped her. He should have done more. Useless boy.)
There is nothing to the smile and, as usual, he does not smile back. Somber boy that he is. He just looks, lets her grief sink bone-deep, too. In the wake of her words there is only a pregnant, pointed silence as he studies her face, the silence and his eyes burn. Not with tears but with something else. A memory that does not belong to him.
He draws in a thin breath, the most he can manage with the way his chest caves in. “I would hope you’d know me better than that,” he says finally, the voice strained. He does not look away when he adds after a brief pause, “I would not leave you.”
I just bite my tongue a bit harder
@Mazikeen