In the same way they had not spoken aloud whatever compromise they had come to in parenting their girls, so too had they never spoken aloud their insecurities from the past. Of the things that lay like anchors on their feathers, slowing their headlong flight towards one another into a crawl. Just as he is uncertain of how these things are meant to be, so is she. Nothing in her life had prepared her for this type of desire to be with another. It’s not a bold thing. Not loud or insistent, instead pressing just beneath the surface. A tether that brings her back to Taiga even when she might have flown away.
It’s a fragile thing she knows, and in her own incompetence, she fears breaking it. It’s that, more than anything else, that keeps her from admitting her true attachment. Even more than the fear he would find someone better, someone truer. Even more than the fear he would one day find her lacking.
Were she a braver woman, she might voice these. Might express the doubts that lay deep in her heart, holding him at arm’s length when she should be embracing him instead. Might even reveal it is herself she doubts, never him.
But she is not a brave woman, so such thoughts remain locked behind her lips.
Instead she reaches for him, muzzle pressing against his cheek in a silent display of sympathy for the much more tangible pain in his wing. ‘Better’ he says, but she has come to know him well enough to know better does not mean as well as it should have been. She does not say anything however. She would not chastise him for doing as he felt he must, would not encumber him with her worry. Instead she offers him her silent support in the only way she knows how.
His question stirs her however, and she withdraws. Her dark eyes rise to his, serene and steady, no longer shrouded by the uncertainty or distrust she had once regarded him with. “Glad to be here,” she replies quietly, her words earnest, filled with all the things she could not say. She hesitates for a moment, not quite certain what to say to express how she feels. “I’ve… never really had a home before.” She pauses, words growing uncertain. “But I think this is what it’s supposed to feel like.”
- noel
@[Nashua]