All things he knows and sees
Fury is a sour taste on her tongue, a rumbling volcano in her eyes. It simmers there, bubbling and churning, pulling tight everything she holds dear (pulling him closer even as she wishes she could push him away for but a moment.) And she is determined to stay strong, to let his body come so close and feel the heat radiating from her pores; does it burn him as it does her? Can he see the way he affects her even now?
Neerja lets him press in close, feeling the need and pain simultaneously and wishing she could take it all away. Unhappily she stalks into the brush, off to patrol and scare away any others who come close and intrude on these quiet moments, these tender times. Even the cat knows when a heart needs to heal and needs to feel. So she disappears with the whisper of the wind that winds between them at last.
"You think I could forget what he has done, Asterion?” And his name is a curse upon her tongue, head tilts high as she looks down her skinny nose to him. Eyes narrow and she steps close, presses near, lays her skin against his skin, sibilating unto him as he whispered softly just to her. "I, too, know my responsibility. You were not there when Isra was taken! My people looked to me as yours look to you, he was of my court. I’ve seen monsters, do not think me a girl to shy away, do not think you can cage me in a castle to keep safe.”
Ears flatten as she withdraws, feeling the jungle breeze and humidity mix until it dances over crimson skin, over sunset sides. Wings are spread, arching toward canopies, letting feathers catch air and a shiver pass down her spine. How hard she’s worked to overcome this fear she holds of herself, of a part that is so profound a part of her that it defines who the phoenix is and why she is and just how she is.
"I will do what needs doing,” she closes with, unable to meet his eyes for the second time since they’ve spoken. And she is closed off to Neerja, letting emotions come to a rolling boil, feeling them tossed in a summer squall from side to side.
He looks for lost eyes, near-crying eyes, and finds only a mass of hair blocking the view. Moira is a statue melting when he tells her how little faith he has in her skills of survival, a glacier being built drop by drop of water freezing. "I’ll have to find a tree full of syrup then,” she pouts. This pushes sulking gaze towards quiet trees of green and blue. Purple leaves could kiss them, but they are too far away. Would they taste like candy if she pressed her lips into their folds? Would they melt like butter under her tongue? "My blood sang, I could do naught but reply.” So she turns to him, she smiles, but it is distant and quiet as never before. "There is something in the air that’s electric and it calls me forth. And there are people I love about the trees that I could not abandon. When Denocte needs answers, I find them.” The challenge is in her voice, daring him to tell her what she should and should not do. Breakable and soft and pliant, these are illusions of a soft thing, a quiet thing, too long pressing down and suffocating the phoenix.
She is a flame. She is mortal and she is wild. She is ruler of her own wishes.
And Fate saw fit to tie her galactic heart and shrink it, condensed into a sun, a moon, a shooting star that orbits a man made of water, of sea-dust. Perhaps she is a comet streaking through his life, perhaps she will crash and burn. But he is not one to tell her where she can and cannot go, what she should and should not do. "I am mortal, but there are things I must do for those I love, too, my King.” At last her eyes beg him to understand, imploring and pleading, pliant and soft so that he might see his own reflection, his own self how she sees him, and her words are a midnight cry, spiraling smoke drifting into a moonless night.
