10-29-2019, 04:06 PM
The moonlight peeks through the canopy now and again as the branches overhead sway in the wind. Redwoods here dwarf the surrounding ever-autumn trees, and the light that filters through the leaves is warm and orange. It is not a shade of light that Lepis enjoys, so she has fixed her sharp gaze on the starry-coated mare lest it wander too often toward the Sylva woods.
Starsin does not respond to her admission, and Lepis does look down for just a moment. Was Starsin surprised, she wonders, or disappointed? Lepis looks back in an effort to read Starsin’s face, and not for the first time she wishes she could understand other’s emotions as easily as she is able to give them. The grey mare is no easier to read after Lepis tells her that Lilliana is a diplomat in training. Starsin replies, and while the words themselves are not of concern (her husband has never been traditional), it is the tone in which they are spoken that has Lepis frowning.
No idea about what? Her expression says plainly; it is unpleasant to be ignorant, but surely Starsin will not hold out on her much longer.
Not in Sylva, Starsin says.
Not diplomatic.
Not platonic.
Her descriptors fall like weights, each one heavier than the first.
Lepis does’nt realize she is flinching away from them, and at the last she has even taken a step away. As though she could make the words untrue by putting distance between herself and the speaker.
“No,” she is saying softly, “No he wasn’t… he couldn’t…” But the words are spoken mostly to herself.
The easiest part of us, he’d told her. His trust, his heart, his undivided attention. She’d replayed those words to herself so often that they are forever seared into her heart, even though six years have passed since he had first spoken them aloud. Wolfbane had given her many things that night: love, their firstborn son, the courage to finally break away from an unhappy marriage. Never has he given her any reason to doubt him; in truth each day since has been piling on further gifts, bricks with which to build their relationship up into a thing that would never crumble.
Yet their reunion had been a wedge driven into the very foundation, and Starsin’s words are the hammer blow that shatters it.
“I…” the word is breathless, her throat feels too tight to speak properly, or perhaps it is her chest. “Thank you. For…for telling me.” Her feet feel as heavy as her chest; she thinks she might want to run, but where to? She knows no place without a memory of him. She cannot outrun her own mind. She is not thinking clearly, Lepis is aware of this, but she asks Starsin as though the other mare might have an answer to an impossible question, as though she might know the mind of a man who no longer even seemed to know his own: “Why?”
@[Starsin]
Starsin does not respond to her admission, and Lepis does look down for just a moment. Was Starsin surprised, she wonders, or disappointed? Lepis looks back in an effort to read Starsin’s face, and not for the first time she wishes she could understand other’s emotions as easily as she is able to give them. The grey mare is no easier to read after Lepis tells her that Lilliana is a diplomat in training. Starsin replies, and while the words themselves are not of concern (her husband has never been traditional), it is the tone in which they are spoken that has Lepis frowning.
No idea about what? Her expression says plainly; it is unpleasant to be ignorant, but surely Starsin will not hold out on her much longer.
Not in Sylva, Starsin says.
Not diplomatic.
Not platonic.
Her descriptors fall like weights, each one heavier than the first.
Lepis does’nt realize she is flinching away from them, and at the last she has even taken a step away. As though she could make the words untrue by putting distance between herself and the speaker.
“No,” she is saying softly, “No he wasn’t… he couldn’t…” But the words are spoken mostly to herself.
The easiest part of us, he’d told her. His trust, his heart, his undivided attention. She’d replayed those words to herself so often that they are forever seared into her heart, even though six years have passed since he had first spoken them aloud. Wolfbane had given her many things that night: love, their firstborn son, the courage to finally break away from an unhappy marriage. Never has he given her any reason to doubt him; in truth each day since has been piling on further gifts, bricks with which to build their relationship up into a thing that would never crumble.
Yet their reunion had been a wedge driven into the very foundation, and Starsin’s words are the hammer blow that shatters it.
“I…” the word is breathless, her throat feels too tight to speak properly, or perhaps it is her chest. “Thank you. For…for telling me.” Her feet feel as heavy as her chest; she thinks she might want to run, but where to? She knows no place without a memory of him. She cannot outrun her own mind. She is not thinking clearly, Lepis is aware of this, but she asks Starsin as though the other mare might have an answer to an impossible question, as though she might know the mind of a man who no longer even seemed to know his own: “Why?”
@[Starsin]
