08-28-2016, 11:23 PM
She was not made for leaving.
It is true, there were stretches of time where she left the northern kingdom to explore the meadow and its forests, to visit the vast expanse of family that lived in and around the Chamber. There were strings of days sewn together where she left the snow and didn’t return until its stink of ice and cold and wintery solitude had faded from the brown and white of her bright, dappled skin. She lived as she began, with a soul that craved everything instead of just one thing, with a yearning for both old and new, change and same. But she always came back to the place that was home, the place father ruled and mother raised their children in, the place most of her siblings still remained. Maybe , though, maybe she stayed because she did not know how to leave, because she was not made for such things.
He answers her after a long silence, a silence during which she had watched his face and loved the way it transformed while he considered her strange question. “I think I would worry,” she tells him thoughtfully, curiously, even though he hadn’t asked, “I think I would worry that it would change me, eventually.” Then it is her turn to fall into a heavy silence, pensive, while she wonders why change seems like a bad thing. But he answers her next question and she is pulled instantly from the stewing of her own quiet uncertainties. “I don’t believe that for a second.” She responds in turn, flashing him a half-smile that brightens the dark brown of such wild eyes, though she doesn’t push him for more when he falls silent again. It isn’t secrets she is looking for, and if that is all he has to share then the silence is enough.
His surprise disarms her, the earnestness that etches itself across the curve of his gold face before he has a chance to apply years worth of invisibility in a far less literal way. “You must not have been inside the walls when the warning came.” She muses as she watches him – and it doesn’t slip her attention when he drifts closer still, close enough to touch. “Beqanna took back the kingdom magic, to remind us that everything we have, we have because she has allowed it to be so.” She pauses for a heartbeat and her breath hums in her chest, but she doesn’t look up at him. Instead she looks out across the kingdom and her brow furrows so deeply that her eyes narrow to uncertain slits for just an instant. “She thinks we’re greedy with our wars and raids. She even took the Desert back, buried the whole kingdom beneath the ocean.”
When her head lifts and her face swivels back to catch his gaze, she is startled by how close they stand now. “What do I think about?” She repeats for a second, thoughtful, sharing none of the elusiveness he had shown earlier. “I think about how useful it would be if I had an affinity for light manipulation, or maybe if I glowed like the bugs that fill summer nights. I’d love to know how deep the caves are, but it’s darker than night inside.” Her head tilts a little when she smiles at him, holding his quiet gaze a few more seconds than was necessary. Then her face darkens a little, solemn, and her eyes drift over the edge of the mountain to trace the shapes drawn into the snow by the wind. “I also think about fitting in, whether I’ll find my place or not.” She hesitates and her dark eyes jump furtively to his to see if he’s watching her or if his eyes are on the world around them. “I think it would be nice to belong somewhere.” She isn’t sure he’ll understand.
He steps away from her and without thinking, without anything more than the gentle furrowing of a dark and white brow, the subtle pull of lip corners into a wistful half smile, she reaches out to bury her nose against his neck. His mane is thick and it coils around her whiskers, tickling her nose with the familiar scent of ice and cold, and something she does not recognize from those places beyond the wall. She has it memorized in an instant. “You have invisibility,” she explains then, in a voice that sounds like a frown despite the warmth that builds for him in the bottoms of those wild eyes, “and you act like being here is the worst thing in the world.” She pulls her nose from his neck, touching her lips once to the curve of his jaw before leaning back again. “I need a way to recognize you even when you try to hide from me, even after you leave me here at the top of this mountain.” She smiles again, a fragile quirking of uncertain lips, and then reaches out to nose his mane, lipping at a few of the closer strands of spun-gold. “Do you think it’s possible for us to be alone together sometimes, Tobiah?”