wear a necklace of rope, side by side with me; birthing, any

[Malis]

"we pull apart the darkness while we can"

It is hardest when they are close like this, when she can smell the ash on his skin, the dry-dust scent that usually followed in the echo of summer but seemed to love him just the same. She breathes it now, quiet, uncertain like she so seldom is. But this thing they have, this space they’ve carved out in a tangled mess of so many lives thrown carelessly together, it doesn’t make sense. She cannot back it with reason or logic, can barely put it to words. But she feels it. It is the ache resonating in her belly, a warmth in her chest that she has only ever known once before- but even this feels different this time. This love, this affection, it is exhausting. To want to protect someone, to want to give them whatever will make them happy, to know that she might be the ruin for him as she has been with so many other things.

Hers is a cursed love. It is not easy and it is not simple, it is wrong and ruinous and it will be now just as it always has been. There are days, so many days, where she decides she will leave him be. She will fade to the forests and the mountains (is this not why she disappeared to give birth here?) and stay away until he has forgotten the strange blue mare who broke the things he loved most. Maybe one day he will even resent her as he should now, and she will not be the ache in his chest that he is to her. But she is too much like her father. She is weak and she is selfish, and she does not know how to let go. Not of this, of him.

So she is quiet because everything she wants to say is the wrong thing- because she wants to know if he regrets this yet, if she has broken too many things for him to forgive her. It will happen one day, of this she is sure. Nothing in Malis’ life is meant to last, nothing but her sin and her shame. Nothing but the body she is trapped perpetually inside. Hers is a life of almosts, of things she will never deserve.

And she doesn’t know how to let go.

When Killdare shifts and the magma hardens to stone and ash that fall away from his skin, Malis releases her hold of Victra. The small girl doesn’t react right away, being born is such exhausting work, but after a moment she disentangles herself from Malis and totters forward unsteadily. The big mans nose touches her shoulder and she responds with a whispery nicker, leaning forward to collide against his thick, feathered legs. Once there she frowns, looking at their width and height, at the thickness of the dark hair around his fetlocks. She turns to look back at her mother’s more slender blue legs, and then finally down to her own.  Seeming satisfied, she reaches down to nose at his feathering, tugging at a clump with impossibly small, blue lips. “I wook-” she pauses to drop the fur from her mouth, lifting her small face to peer all the way up at his. “I look like both of you!”

She seems pleased by this and, with an awfully big yawn for such a small creature, curls herself as close to the chamber king as her uncoordinated body allowed. Victra doesn’t lay down, not yet, but noses sleepily at his elbow with small blue lips and dark whispers as soft as satin. “How long did you wait, daddy?”

Malis slips closer now, close enough press her mouth against their daughters hip, close enough to trace the thin lines of muscle that disrupted the mahogany smoothness of Victra’s wings. Against all logic, against all better judgment, Malis lifts her nose from their daughter long enough to nuzzle a spot against Killdare’s shoulder. But as quickly as she’s done it she’s pulled away again to resume her grooming of the bay and indigo child nestled drowsily between them.

The ash tastes like regret on her lips, and she wants to burn with it.

MALIS

makai x oksana

texture © hexe78

i don't even know what this is i'm  sorry D: