only silence remained, holding my breath in the dark; gasping for air with the lungs of a lark
There is something lonely about him—nearly sad—and it calls to her heart that beats small wings against the backside of her ribs. She feels it fluttering there, this need to help him, to soothe him, to ease the bruises of his kind eyes, and she does not realize that she walks directly into the trap he lies for her. There are no defenses for her to fall back upon. Nothing with which to use as a shield against him.
He crooks a finger and she gladly stumbles forward.
She feels her gaze pulling back to him, leaving where they had been trained on the horizon—looking for her family, she thinks—and focuses on the handsome lines of his young face. “I don’t find it lonely,” she says with a shy smile, rolling her shoulders as though embarrassed to admit it. “But I prefer the company of the small creatures who call it home more than I like the company of most anything.”
A silly thing to say, she realizes too late.
(She was such a silly, silly girl.)
“Molech,” she repeats with that shy tilt of her lips. “I like your name.” Another shy dip of her head, Aero reaching down to rub her nose against her foreleg as though that had been her plan all along. As though she simply could not bear to look him in the eye any longer, least she see mockery reflected back at her.
After several minutes pass, she looks back up. “Oh, no,” she remembers her family again and twists to look back at the horizon. “I live in Tephra.” How could she possibly explain the breadth of her family? How they ran like a pack together—how she sometimes felt lost amongst them all and yet perfectly at home when crowded around all of her siblings. “But I like to come out here and adventure.”
A small shrug.
“My version of adventure, at least.”
@[Molech]