She blinks in the early morning sun with a sense of peace in her heart she never thought she would be capable of finding. But there has been no hint of war in the past many months, no rising tensions between the lands - or, at least, no more than usual. It is hard for terror to linger indefinitely when you start to forget the way the trees had looked when they burned, or the way shadow had come alive and vicious, the way blood smells like iron when it spills over volcanic stone.
There are too many good memories to push them back, too many good days full of moments with Nightlock and their incredible family. It is so easy to lean into those instead. Not to forget the past, but to let it rest awhile until it chooses to rest no more.
The sun catches and glints in the delicate gold rosettes that fall in uneven rows across her back as she stretches and turns from where she had been watching the soft, rolling waves create ridges along the surface of the ocean. As always the day is bright and warm, and even the breeze seems sleepy as it climbs along her skin to lift her mane in shining copper tangles. Distantly along the horizon, she can make out the dark smudge of sooty storm clouds, but they seldom ever come this far.
She turns from the ocean and the sunshine to face the volcanic mass behind her again, distracted by the way the light flashes in places made molten and now hard again. It is a beautiful place to live, though sometimes it feels like something is missing. Someone. The children are still small and new, all bright eyes and bold smiles, legs too long for bodies not yet made for grace. But every day that passes, they grow in some way she thinks her mother eyes can see, a subtle sharpening as though they are being carved by the world to fit into it better. Will Brigade ever see them as they are now? All doe-eyed and free the way they had been together before life happened in the way that it always does. She worries that he will not.
There’s a silhouette in the shadows below the volcano that draws a soft smile across the curve of her beautiful mouth as soon as she notices him. He is still the most breathtakingly handsome shade of steel grey and storm wings she has ever seen. “Enjoying the view this morning?” She asks with a soft laugh, those teal eyes glowing with warmth as she closes the distance between them to press her lips to the heavy curve of his jaw. It is no less amazing now than it was at first when she ducks beneath his neck and against his chest, and he pulls in her without question. Home is the thrum of his pulse against her shoulder, the echo-beat of the wildest heart she’s ever known. It is the sound of his feathers and the scent on his skin - sun and cedar and now her, too. “I love you.” She reminds him with a kiss to the corner of his lips, feeling shy and like silver starlight beneath the weight of such a beautiful promise.
i am brambles but i am tangled in your love