02-14-2017, 03:34 AM
By the time they leave their cave in the Forest and make their way to the world of red and orange and gold that is Sylva, nearly a month has passed. She never intended to be gone from him so long, to let so many days and nights slip like water through her open, grasping fingers. But when she returned to her parents bone-weary and a little broken, with a wound in her neck that threatened to force infection through the tangle of her thrumming veins, it was decided that they would go nowhere until she had healed. This time, this time, she would not disappear beneath their noses either, would not give in to the ache in her chest and steal away in the night. She could not bear to hurt them that way again.
But when they cross the outermost boundaries of the forested territory, when she recognizes the trees and the boulders scattered like haphazard marbles, she cannot wait any longer. The pain, the ache, the worry in her chest is almost unbearable, and when she breathes it is with the shards of lungs carved from windows and bottles, a million pieces of glass forced roughly together. She turns to her parents and touches their necks, pressing kisses into the waiting warmth and says, “I’ll come find you later, I promise.” They must know or guess, must understand the worry etched across her dark face because they do not protest and they do not try to stop her as she turns on her heel and disappears down a familiar path that sends her heart stammering in her chest.
She is breathless and shaking when the trees open to a familiar lake, the glittering blue reflecting slivers of sunlight like trapped stars in its surface. Her eyes are drawn like magnets to the cave, his cave, though she isn’t sure she would’ve found it so quickly if not for the dark shape standing silently outside it. He is alone on the bank, a detail that does not escape her attention, and his eyes are fixed forward and straight ahead, sinking like stones beneath the rippling blue. The trail opened up somewhere behind him so he hasn’t seen her yet, and for a moment she is frozen with an uncertainty that feels cold and dark, like winter trapped in her veins.
It had been so long since she had seen him last, so long since she had curled against his chest and he had warmed her with kisses pressed to the soft of her face. In this drawn out silence, this churning uncertainty, his low words come to find her again. Maybe you’ll come back to me one day. Maybe I’ll be waiting for you. Her chest clenches and knots and she wonders again at how much time has passed, wonders again if he had long since stopped waiting. But it is not enough to push her away, not enough to keep her from him, and suddenly she is picking her way across the sand to stand at his side. But she does not stop beside him like she should, does not pause to find out if he even remembers her, because she is selfish and she is greedy and this ache in her chest is threatening to undo her.
“Stillwater.” She breathes as she pushes against him, soft and sad and so sinuous where she folds herself against the black. She is breathless and aching, meaning to hold back and wait, but somehow she is beneath his neck and against his chest, with her face buried in the crook of that smooth, dark neck. She might be trembling or her heart might be cracking, but she is busy tracing apologies into the crushed velvet of his skin with lips that are soft and pink and flushed with heat. “I’m glad you’re okay.” She says, she whispers, and she does not tell him about nightmares filled with his ruined body and a wicked witch intent on cruelty.
Pressing one last greedy kiss to the point of his shoulder, she disentangles and pulls away, lifting those dark, uncertain eyes to the ridges and planes of a face that is so achingly familiar. “Stillwater.” She breathes again, relieved, hesitant. There is an ache in her chest that begs her to touch her lips to his face, to bury herself against the beating of his heart again, but suddenly she finds she cannot move. Her eyes darken and fall away from his face, away to his lake and that endless churning blue. When she speaks again it is just a whisper of sound, of stolen starlight trapped between her lips, “I told you I would come back.”
A pause and uncertainty steals the words from those pale, parted lips, But did I wait too long?
But when they cross the outermost boundaries of the forested territory, when she recognizes the trees and the boulders scattered like haphazard marbles, she cannot wait any longer. The pain, the ache, the worry in her chest is almost unbearable, and when she breathes it is with the shards of lungs carved from windows and bottles, a million pieces of glass forced roughly together. She turns to her parents and touches their necks, pressing kisses into the waiting warmth and says, “I’ll come find you later, I promise.” They must know or guess, must understand the worry etched across her dark face because they do not protest and they do not try to stop her as she turns on her heel and disappears down a familiar path that sends her heart stammering in her chest.
She is breathless and shaking when the trees open to a familiar lake, the glittering blue reflecting slivers of sunlight like trapped stars in its surface. Her eyes are drawn like magnets to the cave, his cave, though she isn’t sure she would’ve found it so quickly if not for the dark shape standing silently outside it. He is alone on the bank, a detail that does not escape her attention, and his eyes are fixed forward and straight ahead, sinking like stones beneath the rippling blue. The trail opened up somewhere behind him so he hasn’t seen her yet, and for a moment she is frozen with an uncertainty that feels cold and dark, like winter trapped in her veins.
It had been so long since she had seen him last, so long since she had curled against his chest and he had warmed her with kisses pressed to the soft of her face. In this drawn out silence, this churning uncertainty, his low words come to find her again. Maybe you’ll come back to me one day. Maybe I’ll be waiting for you. Her chest clenches and knots and she wonders again at how much time has passed, wonders again if he had long since stopped waiting. But it is not enough to push her away, not enough to keep her from him, and suddenly she is picking her way across the sand to stand at his side. But she does not stop beside him like she should, does not pause to find out if he even remembers her, because she is selfish and she is greedy and this ache in her chest is threatening to undo her.
“Stillwater.” She breathes as she pushes against him, soft and sad and so sinuous where she folds herself against the black. She is breathless and aching, meaning to hold back and wait, but somehow she is beneath his neck and against his chest, with her face buried in the crook of that smooth, dark neck. She might be trembling or her heart might be cracking, but she is busy tracing apologies into the crushed velvet of his skin with lips that are soft and pink and flushed with heat. “I’m glad you’re okay.” She says, she whispers, and she does not tell him about nightmares filled with his ruined body and a wicked witch intent on cruelty.
Pressing one last greedy kiss to the point of his shoulder, she disentangles and pulls away, lifting those dark, uncertain eyes to the ridges and planes of a face that is so achingly familiar. “Stillwater.” She breathes again, relieved, hesitant. There is an ache in her chest that begs her to touch her lips to his face, to bury herself against the beating of his heart again, but suddenly she finds she cannot move. Her eyes darken and fall away from his face, away to his lake and that endless churning blue. When she speaks again it is just a whisper of sound, of stolen starlight trapped between her lips, “I told you I would come back.”
A pause and uncertainty steals the words from those pale, parted lips, But did I wait too long?