[P] be who we are

[Samaira]

i got all i need,
all i need,
i'm flying

Samaira doesn’t say anything at Asterion’s realization. There is nothing else to say about her injury now, and on that day the one thing she had needed most was not to talk about it. He had not asked, and she had not told him about it. She hadn’t told anyone about it, not until now. It is a story she carries heavily in her heart, and parts of it still a secret.

And although he cannot look at her, she looks at him when those words pass through his lips. They surprise him, but she doesn’t see him differently for him. The earthen woman could never ask such things of him, but that he would even consider them, all for the ways in which she was hurt and wronged… it’s a strange kind of warmness. And that she has still not mentioned Cassius, has not told him the entire truth, well, that perhaps tempers it a little. What would he think, if he knew of the boy she had loved who had turned into a man filled with obsession and madness?

“I wouldn’t,” she says, solemnly, with her silver eyes cast upon his face, “even if you could. We are better than that, than what it would make of us.” Samaira doesn’t say that it makes them better than the ones in Irindor, the ones who strip the flight from pegasi and chase and hunt and kill them despite the fact that their birthright is out of their control. She doesn’t say that it makes them better than the ones who turn in a pegasus, out of fear or promises of wealth or hatred.

But she feels it, and knows it is true.

“They were, and they did.” Samaira’s moon-bright gaze turns toward the sea, and she wishes she could share it with her parents. Her father would have loved it, as wide and deep and far as it is. Like his love, and his warmth, and his strength. “They passed, a few years ago,” it’s a bittersweet thing, remembrance. But the least she can do is honor all that her parents did for her by staying alive, and enjoying the freedom she now has.

Samaira wants to believe that she will, that her heart will have every wish and more. But when Asterion touches her, gently, upon the cheek, some part of her thinks it will not be so. That she is not destined for such wonderful things. But she is content, for now, to stand here with him by the sea and watch the sun rise into the sky. To let the morning pass and wash over them, still and serene. She is content, for now, to let it be, and to let them be who they are. Because in that moment, short as it is in a lifetime, it is enough.

"Speaking."

credits

@Asterion I'm not crying, you're crying