what if the way we started made it something cursed from the start; vulgaris

[leliana]

I know what it is but I'm hoping that all is well
no harvest of green but it's still my heart to sell

She should have more of a sense of self-preservation.

There should be alarms that sound in her head, a ringing in her pulse, a pull in her belly that drags here away from hungry eyes. She should turn from this. She should find haven in Tephra or with her sister. She should be protecting herself from the gale force winds that she instead throws herself into—the danger that she so willingly swallows and invites into her chest. Instead, she angles her head so she can continue to watch him as she approaches, feeling the warmth seep from his scales and hang between them.

“You most certainly have my attention,” she says quietly, guileless, and helpless beneath the piercing of his gaze. There is enough of him that reminds her of Dovev. Enough of him that quickens her breath, and causes the scars to nearly break open under the pressure—but, he is not Dovev. There is something about him that is more refined, more practiced. Dovev was all brute force and violence, and while she has no doubt that Vulgaris could resort to such measures, he does not strike her as turning to that first.

So she gives into the curiosity and closes the distance between them, her hazel eyes roving over his hard-edged face. She reaches out and presses her lips to his jaw, the coolness of him surprising. A slow hum begins to build in her throat as she taps into that which comes most naturally to her. “Shh,” she says without thinking, her mouth roving down the muscular arch of his neck. “Don’t move.”

The healing blossoms like a rose in her chest, the warmth spreading through her and into him. She follows the golden light of it, trailing it as it loops and swirls, tracing it down his veins as it branches out into the furthest parts of him. He has no massive wounds to speak of. No fractured, splintered bones or weeping lacerations—but he has lived and thus there are aches. There are bruises. There are knotted muscles. Her healing spreads out and over them all, unknotting and untangling and knitting back together again. She frowns in concentration, a faint sheen on her neck, as she traces his neck mindlessly.

When the healing curls back unto itself and comes to rest in her chest again, she smiles, eyes still closed.

It had been too long since she had done that, and the satisfaction is tangible.

It etches clearly onto her features when she finally flutters her eyelashes open again to find his gaze, the shadow of a smile chasing around the ghosts that haunt the corners of her mouth.

“Possibility,” she finally answers him. “Tonight is lovely because of possibility.”

I put everything I had into something that didn't grow
like going on a wild hunt, shooting arrows without a bow

@[vulgaris]