i am the mace, the map, the fall and the high
She had burned hot and cold, pulling him in then pushing him away. If he were any other, this might have upset him. But he is Reave, and the mercurial stallion had instead been amused. More, he had been intrigued. There is nothing more enticing to a tempestuous creature like Reave than taking him by surprise.
She had surprised him in so many glorious ways.
He is injured when he returns, the signs of battle on his skin. He should bathe, but instead he moves towards the garden. He isn’t certain why he finds comfort in that place. He knows only that he wants it now. Though the gashes burn and the bruises ache, though dirt is pressed into the bloodied crevices of his armor, he climbs to the familiar cliff rather than descends.
He doesn’t expect to find her there however.
For a moment, he stops and stares, wondering if it is nothing more than a memory. But as the days begin to curl around her in the emotions she wears so freely, he knows she is real. He is content to simply watch her for long moments, admiring the heartache and uncertainty that dances around her. There is a heaviness to her that had not been present last time.
It is that heaviness that draws him closer. Not to mutter words of sympathy (he has so few of those), but instead to better understand it. She has made him impossibly curious, and he is not one to rest until that curiosity has been sated.
Even in his battered and bloodied state, he finds himself unable to resist the puzzle she represents.
The familiar grin finds its way easily onto his lips as he closes the distance between them, a sharp contrast to the grimness of his form. When he finally speaks, his voice is redolent with his amusement. “Were you hoping to find me here frozen to death, little bird?”
reave
@Elliana