09-10-2021, 05:00 PM
selaphiel
And she smiles at him and offers him a promise that he clings hard and fast to, says she’ll stay, and he dares wander closer. Deeper into the pool of the emotion that radiates outward from the center of her.
(Does he realize that the feelings blooming and bursting in his chest don’t belong to him at all, but to her? He must because they are so foreign that he would not know how to carve them out of the depths of himself.)
She smiles at him and he smiles back, the curve of his mouth all tinged with the uncertainty that she projects onto him. It is such a strange sensation, to realize that he is stepping directly into a field of her feelings, and he immediately feels like he is intruding on something secret, sacred.
But he does not allow himself to retreat because he does not trust that she will not flee into the darkness again. He had been drawn to her then because the beauty of her tightened a vise around his windpipe, because he had not yet understood what it meant to be shrouded in death, because he had wanted to help her in some way.
And now?
Now he wants to convince them both that he is capable of carrying on a conversation that does not end in one of them running.
Her question elicits a laugh. Soft, soft, soft. Barely there at all. There is no mirth in it, really. Rather it is a sound of disbelief and he shakes his head, a smile barely lingering in the furthest corners of his mouth as he studies her across the negative space that separates them.
“I don’t know,” he answers and it is the most honest answer he can offer. Neither good nor bad seem to cover it. And, because he understands how difficult a question it can be to answer, he asks her something else, “where have you been?”
I just bite my tongue a bit harder
