BURNED LIKE A COIN IN MY HAND
He knows it is true before she steps into the light. Those two words “I don’t–” That voice– The memories– To hell with what’s happened to her or what she’s seen or the demons in her mind– it is Seraphina before him, she’s alive. She’s alive and that's all that matters. Right? His heart, which had been too afraid to hope, his heart sings.
She steps into the light and the first thing he sees is not her scars or her bare neck but her eyes, blue and gold and full of– some war he could not know. He does not see the unshed tears but maybe, maybe he sees bits and pieces of the grief she tries so hard to conceal, to carry. It becomes hard to meet those heavy eyes but he does, for longer than feels comfortable, looking away only when it almost becomes too much to bear.
The golden scars– Isra’s work– tell a story not everyone knows how to read. So often Eik himself had been misinterpreted, all because of that patchwork of scars, knotted in some places like a burl of a tree, in others slick and black like obsidian. Sunken and bulging, clean and jagged, each with an untold and often assumed story. Scars are secretive things. As much as they may seem to boldly display one tale there is always a second, sometimes a third and a fourth, hidden unseen beneath the surface.
When he looks at the depth and length of Seraphina’s scars, he can picture the great paw and how it sunk into skin. He can see how close it was to tearing her eye out, closer still to spilling her brains. He can almost even feel how the claw would sink into flesh and then– rip away, easily as tired wallpaper, half the pulp of her face.
(Is that how she lost her collar? Or was that removed afterward? Regardless, he’s glad it’s gone. Burning One or no, the piece of steel was never what defined her. He would be happy to never see it or anything like it again.)
“I don’t know.”
He once thought touch had no purpose that was not violent.
Closed fist or open hand, the only intent worth having was to strike.
He once thought many things that seem so childish now. Time, the great teacher, was always putting him to shame (Do you see? Do you see what a fool you made of yourself? Look at who you were–) and there was no end to it. Surely a year from now, or two, or five, he’ll kick himself for the actions of today.
The point is– it does not matter that Seraphina does not close the distance between them.
He does.
The details of the movement are lost or blurred– does he walk or run? Make a sound? Does he appear to briefly glow in that dying light, the way the slot canyons drink in the sun and make it their own?– until he draws closer and time slows. He slows, too, carefully searching her eyes– is this okay? – before moving into an embrace. Chest to chest, his head resting gently on her withers.
There are so many things he could say, but nothing he wants to, not yet.
See, to Eik this embrace is not about mourning. It is a celebration, and a reminder. And an apology. “I’m sorry, Seraphina,” he murmurs her name into her spine, like a secret. “I’m so sorry.”
IN THAT SADNESS OF MINE THAT YOU KNOW
@
Time makes fools of us all
