There was something familiar in her laugh, brief and bold like a crow taking flight, sunlight through the cracks in its wings. Acton wanted to ask why the idea was so funny to her (curiosity for how her mind worked, and how she saw him), but instead he contented himself with the way she leaned against him, the soft exhale of their breaths mingled together.
Were these the moments he had been missing? The buckskin knew, when he returned to the Night Court, that there would always be a part of him wishing for this.
“Maybe it is,” he allowed, and did not add and so is the idea of you in Denocte. There was no reason he could see for the thought; it wasn’t like he was standing with her in the blazing heat of day, after all. The night was a shroud above them, the sky a ribbon of stars, like a trail you might follow if you had half a mind -
And that is the point Acton figured he’d been hanging around Isra too long. He gave a snort and felt a little more himself, and then he bumped his muzzle against his daughter’s cheek and stepped away. When he did the cold that took the place where she had been pressed up against him felt almost unwelcome, like waking up from a dream. Or a drunkard having their head ducked in a barrel.
“Alright then,” he said, and his grin was still a little sly when he turned it on her, but it was also full-happy. There was nothing of a knife in it at all, though the starlight still glinted of her hurl bat. “Take me somewhere to watch the dawn from - gods know the dunes all look the same to me. Lucky thing I ran into you.”
He realized then that it did feel lucky. Like something he ought to be grateful for — and so he was.
@
these violent delights have violent ends
