Euphrosyne
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She feels the heat of his stare, like moon fire. She wants to drink in its intensity, she wants to know what rests behind his restless eyes, but instead she only meets his gaze timidly They are not much different, bathed in silver light, standing beneath Caligo’s radiance. There is a hum in the air from the music around them and the crowd that has decided to give them a wide berth. The breeze circles and circles, ruffling the curls that have fallen from their ties. Minutes pass after she has asked her question, minutes that drag on and on until they feel like hours, but she doesn’t mind. She takes him in. She studies him as he studies her, and she smiles shyly in return.☙━-------━✿━-------━❧
I do, I am always lost. She watches the shadows of his face deepen, the way his lips crease, ever so slowly, into a smile. But is that not part of living, to find yourself? No matter what you find?
The words leave his lips tenderly, like he has exposed a wound he does not think will heal. “To find ourselves, yes,” she ruminates on the question an instant more before she whispers: “but to also shape ourselves, our destiny. We all have a choice in who we become.”
What do you fear when all the sky is yours?
“It’s not.” he might miss it; the way the words slide past her tongue. They are soft, and fragile, like all the ones that have come before. She wants to pull them back, to hold them between her teeth and never let go. But they were there, hanging between the two of them, and there was no taking them back. “I-” all of what she wants to say feels wrong, dangerous, like exposing her own secret might drive her to the brink of no return.
She unfolds her wings slowly, gently, letting the bottom pair stretch so he could see them splayed. The tips of several flight feathers had been shorn so she could not use them. They had chosen the bottom pair on purpose, so no one would look at her and see her as blemished; they would not be able to guess that she had been disfigured, desecrated, all so she wouldn’t escape the chains they had latched to her ankles every night.
There is heat flushing the contours of her delicate face, and she looks away. She had felt shame before; humiliation was a ritual the guards of the House did not shy from, but this was different. It felt vulnerable, raw, like an ache in her chest she could not be rid of. “I-I’m afraid they’ll find me, and take me back.” The confession feels like a knife to her chest.
There are several heartbeats before she dares to meet his eyes, searching for something she isn’t sure she wants to find. What would he think of her now that he knew she was ruined?
“What do you fear?”
“speech”
and I guess I don't mind drowning in him
@Tenebrae
