a river of words. lestan found that through their torrent he could not always meet her eyes, that his too focused upon the inexorable sea and the driftwood upon the bank, of the sun glinting from the wood, something for his mind to pea-plant-tendril around and ground himself as reverie spoke in her own pained truth.
she spoke to the feelings of entrapment, to the way she had spun around him. she spoke of her sister, of the gilded sea; of what she had fought, what she had lost. who she had been. what had been expected of her.
happiness, then, he had brought, armfuls of it.
you made; yes, lestan heard its past tense and looked down at the denfloor between his paws, drawing a breath.
the statements of rejection almost brought his head up in sharp confusion, but it was the admission that reverie was falling out of love that was bloodletting.
and so for a long time, lestan said nothing. he could not argue with her; he would not deny her story nor the essence of who she was. reverie loved fully and completely at a high cost to her, and it frightened him.
the sea, the sea. if she allowed he meant to softly cover one of her paws with his own. "y-you're not hard to love, reverie. don't believe that."
it felt like he couldn't breathe, couldn't —
how do you fall back in love with someone?
no one did that.
"i'm sorry i have made you feel rejected." always? always? always rejecting her? where? the apology felt disingenuous, for lestan did not see where he had done either until these very last days, after that horrible argument at the beachhead before everett had taken the children.
or did she mean his — malady?
despite his best efforts, frustration was starting to seep into his tired soul. always forgave him? why had she said nothing? why had she forgiven him only to hold it now in her palm and say look what i've done for you.
if only lestan had the words to tell reverie that his caretaking of her in those addled, manic times had destroyed his desires and exhausted him. that the bleeding again and again and again, and her refusal to be seen by healers, the journey they had made, the overwhelming shame that his wants had harmed her body with the birth of blossom, and how she had told him so weakly she would die and there was nothing to be done.
lestan had not been prepared for it, but he had been prepared to begin acceptance if she had not sent him to the witch.
and even then he had gone, for her, only for her to hurl the life he so loved toward him, and threaten to take it herself. something had broken that day and lestan was not certain how to get it back.
but he said none of this, only stared blankly toward the sea and then down at their paws, and then — he felt blood in his jaws, the man's blood; he felt sick and spinning; he remembered the sight of reverie scarlet-stained and crumpled in the sand, and the mingling of those crimson drops.
"h-how c-can you say you love me so completely and then say you will end your own life? if t-that is — i — that is what i meant. i don't w-want to be the beginning and the end, reverie. if it c-can't be blossom then it should be you. all your life you've lived for others, haven't you? don't l-let me be another."
he was so tired. nothing she had said was untrue, nothing warranted argument. but lestan could not continue on this unknown rocky path where they loved each other so fiercely it was to a great detriment. he thought only of blossom, how selfish it would be to walk into proverbial seas with reverie.
"i d-don't know how to fix — me," the mayfair admitted, face at last painted in silent saltwater, too ashamed to do more than allude to the consistent failures of his body since the birth of their daughter, before, really. "and i l-love you, rev, you know that. truly and deeply. but if — all you have been doing is staying and forgiving me for constant rejections, i — don't want that either. it's unfair to you and has been unfair. i w-want us to be better, and i t-thought maybe we c-could take some time, to settle, now that you're s-seeing bridget." lestan was stumbling, and eventually he simply stopped.
blood in his teeth, heavy. the metallic hint of copper rising all through swiftcurrent. he had begun to associate the smell of blood with her soft coat and it was a destructive realization.