He shouts and it feels like the sound has been ripped from her own chest because the ache that settles there has teeth and claws sharper than any beast she’s yet known. It carves a crater out of her, builds a home inside the hollow as though that sound will never leave her. As though it will haunt her as all of her decisions have. “Oh god, Nikolaus.” Her eyes open immediately, and the pink is so pale it almost shines like crystal as she pulls her desiccated body from the tangle of dying, swaying forest. Branches reach for her, tangle in what is left of her mane and scratch at her delicate face, but she cannot stay, not now. It is a wonder she ever thought she could hide from him.
She had never been able to deny his gravity.
But they come together like magnets, her delicate broken body hurtling into the warmth of his just as he lunges forward into her. “Nikolaus,” she cries, and the sound is so brittle, too broken to be like birdsong, too soft to be anything less, “Nikolaus are you okay? Are you hurt?” His mouth is against her cheek and even now his touch smooths away every hard, broken shard she’s used to build a wall around her heart. She leans into him, letting his mouth touch whatever part of her he can reach, but she is scared and breathless and whimpering because the scent of blood is like a tangible thing spilling down her nose and choking her.
She tries suddenly to push his face aside, even though her body burns at this closeness she’s missed so desperately, craved for so long. He’s hurt, he’s hurt and she is useless, he’s hurt and all she can do is touch the jagged edges of the wound with cool wooden lips when she finally finds the place blood is spilling from.
But something shifts between them, around them, and he’s dragging her into his body like she’s the one that needs protecting, like she’s the one that needs to live. She fights him, trying to understand where this new danger is, trying to gauge how to protect him. “Nikolaus, no.”
Silence catches the no, holding it uncertainly as though it cannot fathom all the wretched fear she had pushed into that one, single syllable. While his name had been shouted into the dark, into the wind, into the wild of a world torn apart by living nightmares, the no was shouted into a world suddenly bright and warm, and from lips made soft in a way that breaks every last thing inside her.
She is aware of the sound of her name on his lips, but she is completely and wholly incapable of doing but this ragged gasping thing that might be like breathing. He hasn’t noticed, she is sure he hasn’t noticed. His back is to her now, only slightly but it is enough, and his beautiful silver eyes are turned to a world that is impossibly day and green and alive. Yet it is nothing compared to what he has not seen, to what he does not realize.
Linnea is alive.
And not in a way of strong bark and leaves and blooming flowers. She is alive. There is sound in her ears and it takes a moment to remember that this is what her heart sounds like when it races, what her breath sounds like when she can hardly catch it. She is soft and warm and her skin is a stormy gray with dapples ringed in the crimson of her family. She can feel the sun on her back, feel the breeze tangling in her hair so that it dances along her neck and tickles her face. “Nikolaus.” She whispers, and the sound is so quiet that she won’t blame him if he does not hear her, but he must, he needs to see this, needs to confirm that she is not losing her mind. So she says his name again, a little louder, “Nikolaus?” And though she wants to move forward and press herself into the warmth of his body, she feels terrified to move, terrified to breathe, terrified to shatter this impossibility that seems wilder even than this peaceful spring day around them.
linnea
these wildfires grow and grow until a brand new world takes shape
@[nikolaus]