[P] [FALL] Man of oil

[Antiope]

hold your breath, close your eyes, turn your ear to the sky

The world grandchildren is like someone has taken her axe and embedded it deep into her heart. It is a legacy, but one that she might never leave behind. A part of her story which will never be written. The way that Eik speaks about his children can do nothing for Antiope but open up this gaping hole inside her which echoes a name, over and over again.

He cannot possibly know what is missing, but every part of her feels it deeply and unendingly.

The Regent doesn’t know how to tell him that the world is incapable of such amounts of kindness. Her years have given her nothing but war, and that is why she wishes for peace, because if she had peace her wish would be for something else. Perhaps that is the ache inside her, the longing, the lioness who haunts her bones, that says there will never be change, or serenity. Perhaps finding it can be a purpose.

“Farewell, Eik,” she remarks, as the dark-eyed man begins to dissolve into the crowd. She does not speak again—merely nods her head and blinks, slowly, like a cat sharing its understanding. All she had given him was the truth. It is nothing remarkable, honesty, but what equines owe to each other and to themselves. He is gone, by the time she turns away, burning and aching and aching.

"Speaking."

@Eik closed <3

∞