I paid the price and own the scars
why did we climb to fall so far ?
His silence forces her own hesitation to take hold, grapple with her heart like a vice squeezing tighter, pulling her strings like a marionette so that she would look up, eyes darting to find his in the dark with an apology on red lips as panic flares in her own yellow eyes. But all that stops just as the time does when his words roll like thunder from his lips. Not in the sense that they were loud, or terribly frightening, rather that it encompasses her so completely that the rest of the world melts away. Pictures form before her eyes of the story he so kindly offers, those smiles finding her hanging on every syllable uttered. He should have been of Denocte, haunting the halls and library during the night with her, yet all she is given is this chance encounter.
She could have been left reeling.
Instead, she is steadied as he finds her staring at him, wide-eyed like a child, comforting like a friend, and reassuring as any who's known such confusion and conflict would (should) be. That he reaches for her in those moments plucks at her heart, causing something in her to unfurl and stretch like a cat, something that was slumbering and should have stayed in such repose. She feels it as it arches its back, slips talons down her spinal column, lodges them at the base of her neck until she is immobile, her breath a mere whisper of comfort as the stars begin to light up the sky.
Moira could find constellations in his eyes, too, but it's something doesn't say. Already he had paused from her previous comment, and perhaps had mistaken it for something it was not. Whatever the case, another painful squeeze of her heart follows the conclusion of his epilogue, a soft ending with regret lacing it together and tying a bow on top.
She couldn't have stopped if she tried, and carefully she extends her neck to brush along his shoulder. "You could not have known, Asterion. It is not your fault," she whispers it as though it's something she's said a thousand times before and will again. But those words are as much for herself as they are for him as she remembers Estelle then and how beautiful she would look under these stars, under this moon. How handsome she would be here, beside this man of twilight and dreams, rather than silly Moira and her skin set afire. "Do you want to know the ending?" Simple curiosity drives the question just as the previous one had been.
It is so easy to talk to him, almost as though she has found a friend again. But she withdraws at that thought, pulling away, pulling into herself. "It is not much, but I am glad you did not wish then, that night. You're a splendid companion, if I may be so bold. If you had, perhaps I would not have met you tonight, and I am very glad that we did meet." She smiles at him, a twinkle in her eyes that just might be like the stars above, like the pale white that paints her breast and wing - marking her as a Tonnerre as the flames never would.
"But I've asked so much, I apologize. You...uhm. Well, you can ask me questions too, I don't think I'll bite." Amicable as ever, sweeter than sunshine, Moira softens at last even as she tries not to panic. What has she opened herself up to?
we made our love out of stacks of cards
@Asterion d'awww poor asterion ! she's not sorry though, even if a little sympathetic
