Her laugh is a balm to his ears, a ringing bell, a reminder that however swiftly she is torn between emotions it is always this merriness, this joy she returns to. It is a spring below the surface of her heart and it nourishes them both.
But still on his mind, so recent the sweet-sorrow of it clings to him yet, is his conversation with the storyteller. Of love and wanting and freedom – of regret. The unicorn with the drowning ocean in her eyes had reminded him of a wish he’d made, a long time ago, for a little girl of gold with flowers in her hair.
He’d wished then only for her happiness – he’d given no thought to his own. And now…?
So strange it is, to talk of gods and remember his body, broken, weeping blood. A fear thicker, more sour than that blood heavy on his mind and on his tongue. Surely that is the furthest he’s ever been from being a god – yet he feels further still now.
“You saved me,” he chides softly, “which you only just reminded me of.” Owing he thinks, all the things he owes her – not once but twice has she saved him with her dagger, there on bloody sheets and again when he followed her from the riftlands in the first place.
And she – she owes him nothing at all, and yet she gives and gives. Does she know it? Does she realize each word, each look, each laugh is its own little gift? She is teaching him, in each moment, how to live. Not as a god, but as a man.
Lysander is rarely surprised, but she surprises him when she tucks her side against his, when she fits her shoulder behind his own and her hip to the smooth golden rise of his. It is not the first time they have touched – it is not the most intimate (that, of course, would be the touch of silver dagger to torn skin, iron of blade to iron of blood), but it feels like both.
And it feels, too, a little like home. Like a foregone conclusion, a thing that they have done before, will do again, another dance through the looping endless wheels of time.
Her whisper is so faint, so soft, but she is near enough he could never miss it. She is too close, even, to see him smile in response, but maybe she feels it in the way his body shifts against hers, making room.
“I have little choice,” he answers, and his tone, his eyes, the dark corners of his mouth are all laughing. But he is quick to continue, lest his words wound where they were not meant to, and slow to quietly wonder at the way their bodies fit, the downy-soft of her feathers against his side. “But if I did I would still stay.”
It is as close as he can get to a truth that has not yet revealed itself, even to him. But oh, it is beginning to.
we wake with bright eyes now
@
