clarity, paint me bright like stars in the dark of night
If she noticed his discomfort, she didn’t respond to it—didn’t acknowledge it. She had grown up wild and free and restless, honeyed spirit never learning the boundaries or fears of overstepping them. Space had no meaning to her, and she could not comprehend why someone would want it. So when he moved closed to her, when he nipped at her, she laughed low—the sound like wind whistling through the canyons, low and natural and right. Her own teeth finding the flesh on his muscled neck and pinching lightly.
He tasted like the wild, but with something else.
An edginess—as if the wild was trapped in his chest, as if he denied it.
Curious.
“That’s alright,” she said with a grin and a roll of her pale shoulders. At his question, her eyes sparked, and her smile grew. “As a matter of fact, I do.” She hadn’t told anyone yet. Not really. The story still lived solely within her, growing and twisting within her, taking on new meaning over time. She didn’t like that. Things like this were meant to be shared, meant to be passed along. Despite the fact that she had lived the story, it was not hers to keep and hoard; it was something that should be given new life and a new home.
So she found his strange, hard gaze and held it easily, unperturbed by the harshness, the rough edges of him. It made sense. And she told him everything. Starting with how she had been in the forest, walking when Time had stopped. She told him of the two-legged creature who needed her to save someone. She told him of the snow and the cave and the voices who had nearly tricked her into death. She told him of the griffin, with its claws and treasure, and the way it had ripped her haunches open, spilling blood out.
Then she told him of the white room and Her, the woman trapped. The women in love.
How she had made a deal to save her, to return her to Time.
And the gifts now embedded in her own chest.
“I’m…stronger now. Faster.” She said it matter of factly, although the magic that raced through her was anything but ordinary. “But I’m tethered by love, anchored by it. The more I am surrounded by it, the more powerful I am. The less, the weaker I grow.” The latter seemed impossible; it was impossible to live in a world without love.
She found his eyes again, face glowing with the adventure of it all.