03-05-2017, 09:30 PM
She is almost unbearably kind, with her soft eyes and the way she thinks the best of him, because she heals, she flies, she does not read minds or know the things his heart desires.
(His own twin, beautiful and as broken as he. She is kind, too.)
Something in him feels heavier for it, to have her wish him happiness, and he wonders if that’s an achievable goal. Perhaps now it could be, with his body fleshy and solid, with his wings strong and feathered, his former delicacy gone.
He almost tells her how he was born – entangled with a girl he would love in all the wrong ways, two impossibly breakable bodies left on the shore to lovers too entrenched in their own doomed romance to say much of a goodbye. But this is too intimate a secret, and one he does not want to share, he perhaps himself like this: a solid thing, remade.
He watches her stretch her wings, watches as a breeze moves through them. His own extend, in mimicry of hers, though his are far plainer – he doesn’t mind this, for his wings are whole, and that is all he’s ever wanted.
(The first time he tried to fly his wings had no business bearing heavy things aloft: there was a snap, a twist of pain, and a bone that healed crooked. He didn’t fly again.)
Now, though: now he knows, these wings support him in all his study architecture, these wings live out their purpose.
He rises, not far, only a foot off the ground. And then, the unexpected: he laughs. He laughs because he had not expected to fly with a stranger (though she is less a stranger now: Leliana, who has healed his aches and touched him). Laughter’s a strange beast in his mouth but he welcomes it nonetheless.
“Yes,” he says, then, imploring – dangerous – he adds, “show me a favorite place of yours.”
contagion
be careful making wishes in the dark