Don't Need Wings to Fly

[selenias]

Don't Need Wings to Fly

 

She threaded her fingers through his hair, and it was an impression of sunbeams that embedded itself in his skin at her touch.

“...For a forest, there is more decay here than I had anticipated.”

To his delight, she did it often. A tug at the scalp, a small tingling feeling, and then her breath warm against the back of his neck as her nails slowly separated tousled strands. He would've done it himself, but he could never object to her, not to Nailah, and he supposed she thought highly of his grooming habits when compared to her own. She, who wore stained silk and caked mud up the back of her calves, he found it all very ironic that she fussed over him more than herself.

You would do well to be careful, Rafiel.

He dug his thumb into the forefront of his robes, little embroidered gold stitches catching upon a nail occasionally. The sun felt warm against his face, a reminder of his current state of mind, and the breezes that blew rustled the branches of the oak above, sending a stream of fall colors into a hazy blur of cerise and orange. If he listened close enough, he could hear the soft whispers of the forest, and they told secrets he hadn't heard in years since his unwarranted departure. Chills crept up the back of his neck, but only out of masked delight did he dare yield a shiver.

“That's to be expected. It will take years before the forest heals and returns to how it once was.”

“I presume it was a grand sight at one time, then. You and your siblings will be using galdrar to restore it, correct?”

“Yes...”

“Then it's likely that it won't take as long as you predict.” Her confidence was reassuring, but hardly enough to dispel his disbelief. Though, out of the two of them, she had enough of it to cover for them both, and for that reason alone, he appreciated her words.

Rafiel sighed, sinking down into the cool ever green that wrapped around his legs and caressed his face in cool tussocks. His sleeves turned heavy with dew as his nails buried themselves in the earth, and as the wind sounded by from the north, fibrous strands clung to him like a second skin and prepared him for the snow that would fall soon enough.

The green would give way to silver, and then, the forest would not seem so dark. It would glow, and would be as bright as the vision is had once been in Ashera's eyes...

He answered her softly: “To restore this forest... I believe this will take years, Nailah. Perhaps even centuries to heal the full extent of what was damaged... Besides the trees, the altars are nothing but rubble. Those will need to rebuilt. The homes. The sacred groun–”

“You forget, years is a short period of time for you herons. The trees will grow quickly, and I would think this place would flourish back to livelihood with outside assistance in very little time at all.”

“...I can't say that it will progress that far in the immediate future, but I do hope so as wel–”

“Though,” she interrupted slowly, her gaze severe as she placed a palm against the bark of a pine, fingers spread wide as if to grasp what she could not hold, “I'd have found it disconcerting if you had said a decade, instead.”

He'd have been lying to himself if he said he hadn't missed the color green. In the desert, it was merely an empty landscape that no matter how much he told himself was just as beautiful, simply could not own up to something as grand as the home he'd known for years. Here, the forest spoke, and the vegetation crept up branches and hung off the oaks in the form of a spider's glossy webbing.

As Nailah stood firm, a shade of honey encased in green, it was easy to recognize that she didn't belong. Fingers on a curve, eye scanning the cluttered sky and her skin a rosy gold in the dim light of the forest... defining features to some, but not what he knew her by. He traced her jawline with his eyes and it was easy to imagine that she did the same, only her sight was always inconspicuous and he was never able to catch her as she did him. Periodically, and always with a catchy remark that made the blood rush to his face more often times than not.

“...Why is that?” he asked carefully, because he knew that gauging look in her eye as she observed through elusive means.

It's a test, she didn't speak. What you say will decide how this ends.

“Because,” her words dripped with bemusement, eye still fetching for his own as he wisely averted them, “we wolves do not have the privilege of living as long as yourself.”

He hesitated before speaking again, fingers urging the dying stem of a flower to prosper. In his grasp, it pulsed like a beating heart, lightly, softly... silently. Down into the throngs of weeds they said their goodbyes. Petals danced, but they did not stay.

Nothing lasts.

“...I would never let anything happen to you.”

“Don't make promises... when you can barely help yourself.” Her words were hardly accusing, but nor were they piteous. They spoke the plain truth, and he wouldn't have been expecting anything less.

“...My Queen.”

“Yes, Rafiel?”

“You do not truly believe me, do you?”

It was the first time he'd seen her look genuinely taken aback.

Her teeth lashed down against her lip, and almost as if she were trodding on air and held together by a puppeteer's strings, through the bracken and across the grass she padded silently. She overshadowed him completely, and he couldn't see her for fear of what the angle would do to his neck. Breath hot on his cheek, and then her fingers were in his hair and tilting his face back delicately, and he had to wonder whether she realized she had even made it a habit to come to him more times than not. The surrounding forest faded, and the sun's warmth dispersed beneath her own overwhelming since of presence.

She spoke softly, voice of velvet, “...I believe your intentions, but not your words, Rafiel.”

If it was an apology, it was near the equivalent swallowing rocks. He knew she didn't pity him, rather, she embraced his oddities as he did hers, but he felt as more of a hindrance than a prince, and it was wearing at times like these, because she swept him off his feet more often then he did her, and he was the heron with wings, after all.

you don't need those to fly. and I don't need eyes to see.

Her lips were gentle on his, and with the return of the gesture it was naught for a moment that he saw himself through her own eyes: something treasured. He certainly shared the sentiments, but in a matter of perspective, he wondered if she could see anything past that.

What came after what already was?

Silence hung between them briefly, but it was filled with a sense of insensible euphoria that neither of them dared gave voice to.

Carefully, he reached for her hand, and without hesitation her fingers were the first to thread themselves. With a light prompting tug she seated herself close, cerise and crimson and petals crunching beneath her robes, shoulder to shoulder, they faced opposite ways.

She was the first to break the silence, and for that, he was grateful.

“...Sometimes,” she started with purpose, “...our bodies fail us... and occasionally, so do our tongues. Without having either at times, you've already granted my desires.”

“...What do you mean?”

Nailah simply grinned, stealing something he had half the mind to give her in the first place. She murmured pleasantly against his lips, her necklace cold against a palm he hadn't even realized he'd moved: “You don't need wings for that, now do you?”

“Just as you don't need eyes?” he countered with a small knowing smile.

She laughed quietly and thieved away another one of his traits of innocence for the last time that morning. “Yes, just... like that.”