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+--- Thread: Duskfire Glacier deep down, you hide a reason for shame (/showthread.php?tid=65682)
deep down, you hide a reason for shame - Gjalla - April 15, 2025
@Blackfell — dated for 24th of march
the pain had dulled, but it hadn’t left. it clung like flesh to bone, a constant hum beneath each breath. but gjalla was alive. breathing and healing.
the den was dark. quiet, save for the occasional whistle of wind outside and the rustle of hide as she shifted carefully. her body ached, but not like before. the fire in her throat had cooled. her thoughts were clearer now.
she sat up slowly, wincing at the stiffness in her limbs. sunlight pooled faintly at the entrance, casting long shadows across the floor. she looked toward it just as someone came to block the light, towering and dark.
softly, steadily—“blackfell?” she breathed. she was ready to see him again.
RE: deep down, you hide a reason for shame - Blackfell - April 15, 2025
— dark shadows. they clung heavily to his mind now. he still burned—with something terrible, something wrathful he hadn’t felt before.
and failure. it was the most prevalent.
but to sheathe that failure, he had taken to drowning himself in duty. duty wherever he might find it, and wherever it might have him. now, he carries hide in his jaws.
dried upon a broad stone free of the snowmelt and ice, stretched and tended to by him. belonging to a fox he had slain; the fur glittering a pale, beautiful white sheen.
her voice was enough to steal his breath. for more reasons than just the most simple: he feared for so long she wouldn’t make it and it would be his fault. blackfell lowers his head and dips into the wideness of their bleak den, finding her with held breath and reverent eyes that avoid her gaze.
he drapes the fur amongst her raven shoulders and then brings his nose to kiss upon her forehead in silence; without words.
RE: deep down, you hide a reason for shame - Gjalla - April 15, 2025
his scent is grounding, it fills her nose—gloriously overwhelming, a splendid contrast to the scent of iron blood. it makes her ache in ways that had nothing to do with wounds. when the pelt touches her shoulders, she startles slightly—then stills. it’s soft. warm. it smells like snow and fire. like him.
gjalla doesn't speak, not yet. she leans into the press of his tongue, his kiss, lids fluttering shut as her cheek slips along the underside of his jaw. it is tenderness without demand, without pride. a kind of quiet offered only to those you bleed for.
she should tell him thank you. she should ask him what he’s done. what’s to come. instead, her paw finds his, resting lightly over it—seeking, not holding. a question. a tether.
RE: deep down, you hide a reason for shame - Blackfell - April 17, 2025
— they are silent for some time. blackfell does not know that words exist.
he fears this might be their forever. silence, trapped inside a den that suffocates with pain and agony. with anger.
her touch upon his paw wrenches his gut. eyes drop to look upon the caress and he instinctively draws away from it, sucking in a tight breath, unable to look upon her face, or her in the eyes.
moving to sit near the entrance, delegating himself to the post of a guardsman.
rest some more.he manages to rasp out, choking on the emotion that draws sword to his throat.
this guilt is crushing. he wears it like armor.
RE: deep down, you hide a reason for shame - Gjalla - April 18, 2025
she doesn't stop him.
doesn’t cry, or beg, or press him to return to her side. though the absence he leaves behind is a hollow, gaping thing—cold where he once lay. instead, gjalla watches his retreat in quiet, lashes low.
it is not rejection she feels. it is grief. his and hers, braided tightly between them. he bleeds it just as she does, only they hide it behind duty and walls so tall most cannot climb them. so she does not try.
her eyes stay fixed on him, emboldened by his silence. “blackfell.” a pause. “you don’t have to be brave for me.”
“not here.”
RE: deep down, you hide a reason for shame - Blackfell - April 18, 2025
— blackfell hears her words. of course he does.
but they fall upon a deafening silence. he cannot speak, for he has no words to say. the only sign that he has heard her, or even acknowledged her, the twitch of clipped ears.
the rise and fall of his sides as he breathes.
for a moment, his head turns and he looks over his shoulder—not fully. enough that his side profile is visible against the shadows of the den; his lips twitch. it's as if he might speak. but he does not, turning his head to the outrance again.
swallowing stiffly.
it is not a matter of being brave. he had never been brave in his life. he simply existed. he did what he must, and that was all. he was duty-bound. his father had created him in his image. he was a crownore. he was onyx, cold, and unbreaking.
it was a matter of guilt.
RE: deep down, you hide a reason for shame - Gjalla - April 18, 2025
gjalla sees the flick of his ears. the almost-turn. the swell of breath held tight in his chest. she understands.
even if it guts her.
her gaze doesn’t leave him, not even when he offers her his back. especially not then. she doesn’t press—doesn’t call out again. her heart aches with the weight of his silence. it is heavier than any wound, heavier than the blood she lost, than the scars that will never fade. heavier still is the way he doesn’t look at her—not really. not like he did before. not with that pride, that fire, that bone-deep certainty that she was his and he was hers.
her throat tightens. not from pain. from knowing. knowing that something has shifted, even if he will not name it. she wants to go to him, to close the space, but she is still healing. and he is different. less receptive, perhaps. that guts her, too.
so instead, she shifts—slowly, gingerly—closer to the hide he brought her. her voice threads through the quiet once more.
“sit with me,” she says. not a plea. not a command. just… soft. hoping he’ll hear her for what she really means. i miss you.
RE: deep down, you hide a reason for shame - Blackfell - April 18, 2025
blackfell is still for several seconds as time ticks past to the tune of both hearts beating. they do not dance like they once had—time wore on, and they were left behind. he draws himself shortly after, his paws upon the cool stone muted thuds.
his head sunk between thick shoulders as he comes close again. the sound of her breathing is constant, and burns against him; before, it had been the most comforting thing in the world. now, he dared not exist in the same space as her.
this distance was crippling. he didn't recognize himself in the eyes of her. periwinkle, endless, and beautiful. blackfell looks upon them, sees the swirling of emotion he stirs, and feels bile rise vicious in the back of his throat.
most daunting, the mangling of her throat. her voice is not the same as it had been before. it is raspier, now. it is altered. what gnaws the most is that he could have prevented it, had he never hesitated.
raven fur melds against onyx when he finally lets himself be near her. leaning to tuck his neck around hers, to find the fur at the back of her head and press his nose there, leaning his weight heavily upon her; feeling anchored as she does the same. chest to chest, shoulder to shoulder, an embrace that does not produce electricity but a solemn, haunting echo in his chest.
he sits in eternal silence as he breathes her in.
RE: deep down, you hide a reason for shame - Gjalla - April 18, 2025
she doesn’t speak. not when he comes close—not when she feels the tremble of his breath against her neck, or the way his weight folds into her like grief incarnate. not when her chest aches with what isn’t being said.
not at all, for there is nothing to say. there’s a part of her that wants to pull away. to demand he look at her—truly look, and not with that guilt-cloaked revulsion she swears she sees flicker behind his eyes. she is not ashamed of her wounds. but he…
he makes her feel as though she should be, but her love for him is a long, terrible thing. like winter. unforgiving, unrelenting, permanent. so instead, she leans back into him. folds herself against him with all the tenderness she has left.