only silence remained, holding my breath in the dark; gasping for air with the lungs of a lark
She is not certain why she hides away for a moment, why she glances down her tiny beak to fix him with her round eyes, looking at him from this perspective. She is not certain why she hides away, some small piece of her nearly feeling something like fear—a trace of it that races up her spine. Were she wiser, she would maybe take this instinct and run with it. She would recognize it for what it is and would turn from him, fluttering through the branches and following them back to her home, to what is safe.
But she is young and naive and he is handsome, so she brushes it aside.
Instead when she takes flight, it is to fly over his head and land before him, shifting as she does so that when the dust settles, it is her standing there before him. Long-limbed and shy, her head dipping down and her wings folding over her back. “You have?” Her voice is quieter than she thought it might have been, some kind of incredulous wonder creeping into the edges of it, as if she cannot imagine why.
No one has ever thought of her like that—not as something singular and unique. Not as something special. She was always one of a set. A part of a pair of twins. A piece of a large, sprawling family.
But he made her feel as though it was enough to just be herself.
As though it was special for her to just be Aero.
Her stomach tightens, butterflies wild, and she braves lifting her eyes to look at him. He is more than she remembered—the colors of him richer, more vibrant. The truth of him as hard to look at as the sun.
“I thought of you too.”
@[Molech] <333