09-08-2021, 03:58 PM
BUT I HOPE I NEVER LOSE THE BRUISES THAT YOU LEFT BEHIND
When he says her name she can feel the knot in her chest start to loosen, and a cool relief wash over her to know that he, at the very least, remembers her. She is not sure why she had expected him to forget, when their history was so entangled with each other. Nearly every defining moment in her life had involved him—or a version of him, she reminds herself, because the guilt that eats at her when she remembers how she had fought with him on the battlefield could only be soothed by remembering it had not really been him. The sound their antlers had made when they collided and locked together echoes in her mind, and she tightens her jaw in frustration as she wills the memory away.
“I would be heartbroken if you did,” she teases gently, forcing a lightness to her tone, and another small smile onto her face. She realizes belatedly that he might take her words literally, recalling how he sometimes struggled with context and tones, since the world he came from was drastically different than the one he is in now. And under normal circumstances she would have been prepared to explain, but now all she can do is stare at the shadows that seem to linger in his blue eyes, and wonder why they were there.
“I did,” her head nods just once as she says this, thinking back on how she had mostly hid and kept to herself during the eclipse. Her run-ins with the creatures had been few, but it was during one such confrontation that she discovered her panther shifting. Grateful as she is, she would have preferred to find it a different way. “That dark was not normal,” she finds herself explaining to him, almost afraid that he now would find that Beqanna is a place he did not want to be— a place no different than the one he had tried to escape. “I don’t think it will ever happen again.”
She searches his face again, and she takes a hesitant step closer to him. “You survived the darkness, too,” she begins carefully, afraid of upsetting him, but also unable to keep herself from digging for answers—to find out why he seemed so different. “Did it change you?” she asks, thinking of how because of the dark she could shift into a panther, only that is not what she is asking him at all.
“I would be heartbroken if you did,” she teases gently, forcing a lightness to her tone, and another small smile onto her face. She realizes belatedly that he might take her words literally, recalling how he sometimes struggled with context and tones, since the world he came from was drastically different than the one he is in now. And under normal circumstances she would have been prepared to explain, but now all she can do is stare at the shadows that seem to linger in his blue eyes, and wonder why they were there.
“I did,” her head nods just once as she says this, thinking back on how she had mostly hid and kept to herself during the eclipse. Her run-ins with the creatures had been few, but it was during one such confrontation that she discovered her panther shifting. Grateful as she is, she would have preferred to find it a different way. “That dark was not normal,” she finds herself explaining to him, almost afraid that he now would find that Beqanna is a place he did not want to be— a place no different than the one he had tried to escape. “I don’t think it will ever happen again.”
She searches his face again, and she takes a hesitant step closer to him. “You survived the darkness, too,” she begins carefully, afraid of upsetting him, but also unable to keep herself from digging for answers—to find out why he seemed so different. “Did it change you?” she asks, thinking of how because of the dark she could shift into a panther, only that is not what she is asking him at all.
A I S L Y N
@Voracious
