selaphiel
He doesn’t tell her this, of course, because he doesn’t think he could stomach the stormcloud of concern he’d seen cast that shadow over her brow twice already. Surely it would call to mind all the time he had spent confined to the darkest places, just outside of reach, never staying in one place too long. So they would not find him. So they would forget he was there.
But it looks different in the light. They all look so different in the light. And he remembers the first time he’d seen her come swimming out of the darkness surrounded by fire, how she’d introduced herself and invited him to call her Maze. How he hadn’t been able to do it. He’d called her Mazikeen and she’d called him Selaphiel and the stilted formality had always made him uncomfortable. Because he was just Sela, just a boy.
He studies her a moment, Mazikeen, and wonders if he called her Maze now if she would respond in kind. If they could be friends. The invitation catches him off guard and he follows her gesture to the foothills, carves his gaze across the silhouettes the trees cut against the light.
He does not fear pain, not really. So, he shifts his focus back to her and nods. (Still too serious, too solemn, the mouth too heavy. He was not built for the folly of youth, the mouth not made for smiling. The lungs were not made to hold enough air for laughter.) “I’d like that,” he says and then he swallows thickly, exhaling a thin breath before he adds, almost experimentally, “Maze.”
I just bite my tongue a bit harder
@[Mazikeen]