She has not had the same stretch of time to wonder and worry and feel the thorny petals of regret bloom within her chest as he has. The weight she carries on her shoulders is so much different than the weight on his - lighter, perhaps, because though she had been lost to everything, her mother had never let her feel alone. Adrift but not isolated, lost but not gone. Even in death she had never left home, and now in life again she had opened her eyes to the same world she left behind.
But she can understand as she looks out at Nikolaus’ face that it was not the same for him. He has grown some, filled out - no longer a boy soft and round with the complacency of knowing only safety and love. His body is long and lean, those muscles wiry along his neck and his shoulder from living in a place of sparse grazing. She wonders if he has even seen himself to know these changes, if he has looked down at his reflection and wondered at the man that stares back at him.
It is his eyes that seem the most different, though. Still bright and beautiful like shining ore, but somehow ancient and out of place on such a young, beautiful face. But it is still him, still undoubtedly her Nikolaus, and she is so softly greedy as she drinks in these differences with eyes like shadowed pink crystal.
He speaks, and she can hear the gravel that grinds in the gears of his throat as he reclaims words that seem slow to wake from such deep slumber. He picks her name to say first, holds it out like a flower and she is helpless to stop that crooked half grin from slipping across lips that are no longer soft and beautiful. He steps closer and she tries to do the same, but it is like moving limbs deadened with sleep and she only succeeds in falling forward before she catches herself again, a feeling of uneasy worry blossoming in the pit of her belly.
At her hooves there are still roots that hold her close and keep her bound, wooden vines that anchor her in place as though she is not entirely ready to be free of them. She understands this in some part of her mind, that she need be still and patient until the sun climbs higher and warms her with life. But it is so hard with Nikolaus so close, with this war of wings in her chest as she looks back at the boy she thought she would never see again. He is here and so close, reaching for her with her name on his lips -
But she is already so tired, she realizes.
Feeling wooden and heavy, clumsy when she blinks and turns to look up at Leliana and those flowers swing across her face to settle in tangles of green and brown and petal-pale pink against her cheeks. “Mom?” She asks, and her voice is the rustle of wind through green leaves, the swish of grass in the richest meadows. The fear in her chest is louder now as she reaches for things she had always taken for granted and only noticed now that they were gone.
Her inability to take the steps that would bring her safely into the crook of his shoulder.
That nagging, patient memory of peering down at branches carved where legs should be.
The absolute quiet inside her skin when she reaches for fire to heal Nikolaus’ broken body.
She trembles, and the forest of her mane rustles against her neck. “I think something is wrong?” It is a question on her lips only, because in her heart she already knows it is truth.
linnea
these wildfires grow and grow until a brand new world takes shape
