Softly my thoughts /
whispered invisible words.
☼
True to his own observation, she found it next to impossible that he sought nothing from this encounter. Perhaps not anything tangible, but undoubtedly the simple satisfaction of the help he sought to offer. It was a strange sort of high, she supposed, the mirth of giving, and it was one that she felt she’d rarely known. The strings within her heart didn’t quite sing as selfish, but neither could she say any of her memories swam with generosity. It made her wonder, if only for a second, before she released the tether and let her thoughts swim back towards blissful darkness.
With a twitch of movement, her moonlit eyes shifting to meet his gaze, a knowing tension to her lips at his selective wording. She hadn’t given him much by way of details for her origins, but his summary was accurate enough. Her tail shifted, the hairs upon its end dusting the plain’s grass, and she hummed her slow assent.
“I suppose you did,” she murmured. “Thank you, for that.” Her gratitude was almost begrudging, as told by the sharpness she tacked on to the edge of each syllable, and the way she didn’t dwell upon it for long. Beyond that, he had something else to say—something far more interesting.
For the first time, her head really lifted; her chin angling with something beyond pride. Her ears flicked upward, finding the strength to gather from where they’d seemed sewn to the crown of her head. There was an immediate fondness, a reluctant sense of wonder, to what he shared.
(She saw the slope of a pregnant belly, her head angling backwards to nose her abdomen with tenderness, despite the bleariness of her eyes that whispered of loneliness and tears. She lay in a bed of birch grass and flowers, the ground surrounding her a tawny, sun-lit throne of everything she needed. The forest surrounding her was loud—so loud—and yet her bubble was small, quiet, and despairingly lonely. She curled awkwardly inward, her head curving into her abdomen where she lay, as she whispered tender words.
‘A girl,’ her dream self whispered to no one. ‘I’d like a girl, this time.’
She wondered if her wish had come true—)
A tear had slipped from her eyes unbidden, and she wrenched her gaze away with a suddenness that was jarring. The memory had come of its own volition, strong enough that she’d lacked the control to suffocate it beneath a crushing fist. Her eyes locked upon the distant horizon, the tension in her features returning.
“Your daughters are fortunate,” she started, her words stiff with… something. “To have a father who cares so much.”
Something, deep within the hollow of her heart, told her she had never experienced something so sweet.
With a puff of tense air, she wet her lips as she followed his gaze towards the distance. To where, she realized, Dawn must have waited. His invitation had her eyes dragging back towards him, her brows drawn with subdued skepticism. It was something she had already considered, the wretched itch to her limbs that demanded more, and yet—
She knew that she would return to Solterra. Only a few steps from its boundaries, and the desert howled for her. Her skin shivered beneath the sudden coolness of Fall wind, and her soul ached for the pieces that remained buried within the catacombs.
Please, something within her whispered, thrashed; desperate to heed a pledge that she didn’t understand.
And so, she ignored it, shaking her head. It was impossible to note that he had, perhaps, realized he’d been a distraction for her—and it was enough to make a dry smile touch her lips.
“Perhaps. One day. Something tells me Solterra is where I belong,” she paused. “But not just yet.”
She sighed through the tension in her lips, huffing in dismissal to his apology. Without any indication of where she was going, she stepped in the direction of Delumine. She had no immediate recollections of what lay within Dawn Court, and yet, she wondered—
“Delumine. What’s it like?” Her words were brusque; nearly a demand. Was it the forest of her dreams, perhaps? The setting of her bittersweet dreams? She had only seen glimpses of the woodland—and though she hated herself for it, she wanted to know. Her slumbering vows to Solis, to the desert, stirred with a vengeance that she swiftly silenced. “Would you show me there, if I asked?”
