FIONA
we will press promises between us like flowers in a book
He pressed closer to her, closing the distance between them just as she did. His touch ignited a flame in her that was as unfamiliar as it was warm and comforting. It was unlike anything she had ever felt for anyone, the way her heart skipped like a filly through a field was he was near. The way it sang and fluttered and danced, and how she never wanted to stop looking at him, and looking for him, everywhere that she went.
Atreus trails his touch along her neck and she loses herself among his burgundy curls for the too-short moment of their embrace. Fiona would stay by his side forever if fate would let her, and even as he pulls away, speaking her name, her body remembers the feeling of his against it, holds to it sweetly. He turned toward the bundle on the table, and she followed, far more curious now at the expression he wore on his face.
The object unveiled, Fiona considered the small bottle and the shining blue liquid inside it. She knew he was a master of potions, often toiling away on some project or two, but she had no idea what this could be that he had brought to share with her. The shift in the expression on Atreus’ face, however, caused her pause. Her lavender gaze settled on his face as she waited for him to speak, as he seemed to be thinking.
But oh, how the words he said were not what she had been expecting at all. A voice, he said, and Fiona’s eyes widened as she glanced back at the unassuming bottle, which had not so unassuming powers within that blue liquid inside. A voice? The very thing her own birth, her own creation, had kept from her. The reason her mother had left them, she and her father. The thing she had grown up without, rarely even thought about, until that day that the floods had come.
That was the first time she had ever felt for what she didn’t have, longed, wished, angered for even. The first time she had felt betrayed by her silence, instead of made unique, made stronger, by it. Sometimes, those feelings still lingered, though more peaceful times had brought the smile back to her lips, and Atreus had returned the joy to her heart. When he reached out to her again, she pressed her own nose to his cheek in kind. Fiona closed her eyes and breathed, thinking.
Was this what she wanted? Was she deserving of such a thing, to reverse what was clearly meant to be her path in life? Did accepting this gift mean that all those years of learning and working to be just as good as everyone else even without a voice, meant nothing? Then she thought about all the things she could do with it, to share her joys with much more fervor than she could ever write. To sing, to laugh. To love aloud.
Fiona pulled away from Atreus’ touch at last, taking in a breath to fill her lungs with the courage she would need. She looked into his eyes and thought of the flower she had let go into the wind that reminded her so much of them, and wonder where it had fallen to the sea, rocked gently by the waves. The way her heart felt, when she was in his embrace. Fiona smiled, and nodded. Yes.
@
