I'm wasted, losing time; I'm a foolish, fragile spine
I want all that is not mine; I want him but we're not right
The smell does not bother her so much as the silence, draping heavily and awkward over them. She shifts under the weight of it, uncomfortable with the clear forced nature of the conversation—feeling as she always did that she had somehow orchestrated their discomfort. Her mouth twists into a frown, invisible brow creasing with concern as her pink eyes slide between the two of them. The first, lime green and stripped of fur in places, looked distraught; the second, the color of steel and storm, looked stoic but rigid.
She sighed inaudibly, air rattling in her throat.
“Fart,” she repeats, her tongue wrapping clumsily around it. It was an unknown to her, her vocabulary limited to the words of beauty passed from her mother to her. She knew of dew and fog and the bite of winter; she knew of antlers peeking through the brush and sunlight dappling hides through the canopy. Her language was one of love—crafted by artists and sheltered by the crudeness of the world. For all of the pain and shame she had experienced in her life, she was remarkably naive to the underbelly of it.
Still, despite not knowing the details of it, she recognizes something vile about his name and she frowns. “Forgive me,” she murmurs, gossamer-voice fluttering on the wind between them, “but I don’t feel as if that suits you.” Adaline tilts her head, sizing him up before giving him a shy, guarded smile. “But I am just a silly girl. I do not know much. Forgive me.” She could only hope that he would not take offense at her presumptions.
Turning toward the other, she remains quiet, soaking in his name. The syllables were strangers, alien on her tongue, but it felt right—the weight of it manageable. “Xylo,” she repeats again. This time just nodding in acceptance. For a moment, she falls silent again, her flesh crawling along her back, before she interrupts the quiet again, desperate to shed the tension. “So what brings you both to the meadow today?”
in the darkness, I will meet my creators
and they will all agree that I'm a suffocator