[private] there must be something in the tide

[Rhaegor]

Their journey back to land seemed to take long -- so long. Though Rhae caught Dawn when she fell, the act of it made him believe the world around them to be thicker than blood, a kind of viscous fluid that prevented him from accessing either his body or his mind out of willfulness alone. Reflexes he had; intentionality he lacked.

Nonetheless, they made it to the place he'd envisioned for them, back there before the panic took over. When they collapsed in to one another beneath an elder oak, Dawn started in to shivering; anxious to sooth her, Rhaegor flared his free wing and encircled the other with it, cradling her to his chest. Invisible rays of light beamed, then, from him to her. Particles of harmless warmth. Anything to help her.

Her keening broke his heart more than he imagined it capable of breaking.

"I'm right here, Dawny, shh, it's okay," he whispered into her ear, feeling a tear slip from his cheek to hers. They'd always been so close. It made sense that they would be together here, now. "You will always have me. I promise."

But his words fell on grief-deafened ears for just as he spoke Dawn wrenched her head from his embrace to look out at the coastline, blindness and strife writ clear in the milky stare of her once-bright eyes. But no matter. Rhaegor's love for Dawn extended past the amount of attention she had to offer him, especially now. Instead of trying to call her back or to force her to ignore her aching grief, he simply pressed his muzzle to her poll, concentrating on the lifeforce he knew to be nestled there.

Not long passed before her pain bubbled to the surface of her being once more. The quiet they'd known for those few minutes pierced itself over and over again with her crying, her begging, her willing to make it all stop.

Unbid, the memory of his grieving Chryseis came. Tears spilled from his own eyes, too.

"I don't think it ever stops," he managed to choke. "I just think we learn to live with it."

And with that, he grabbed her to him and gave both himself and her the permission to become totally lost in their grief, absorbed by the sobs that wracked them from their core to the fringed edges of their being.

Alone, together.

.

@[Dawn]