Two Eyes Cenote beryllium

"you aren't ever coming back, are you?"

her body ached when she woke now, not for pain nor rigour, but for touch. tavina had retreated to the very recesses of muat-riya as of late, glimpsed most often at evening when she strode out to gather more herbs than the palace could possibly need.

sprigs to bind her soul, twigs to wall the pain, newblooms to mute the crying body which wept in loneliness.

"no. you're not," tavina murmured to herself, voice breaking only once.

There were many things unspoken between them, but none so consuming as the nameless wrap of grief. Such a master at hiding it, Eset had even fooled herself, carrying on in the ways she always had.  But Tavina’s isolation was unusual, an ever increasing concern in the hebsut’s mind, so much so she found it difficult to focus on much of anything else. The sesh is trailed that evening as she forages among the dusk-blooming ornamentals.

Eset approaches carefully, almost tentatively, as if reluctant to steal Tavina away from herself. With the utmost care, she places a limb of flowers at the sesh’s feet. The petals are a deep violet, and when she lifts her chin to look into her face, they are a perfect complement of Tavina’s eyes.

“Look what I’ve found,”  she whispers.

<3

one evening, at her lowest, tavina had thought of summoning a fellahin. she knew that their companionship was no longer expected, and she rather felt that her presence as trusted sesh might invite intimacies of their own. but the initial thought had made her feel so pathetic that revulsion had followed, and she had sought to quell the yawning hungers of her forgotten body.

but then eset was beside her, a nightfall shape of lithe beauty, scorpion weed falling from her pretty palm. the matching gaze warmed then misted; a muscle played along her jaw; she could not speak as she found the marigold eyes, laid bare by what she wanted so dearly to be both true and untrue.

“Tavina?” Her name comes from her lips in the softest whisper, the wet flicker in her sesh’s eyes sending a chill down her spine. It is a look she knows, one she’s seen before, and still it robs her lungs of breath.

To never have answers- abandoned to wonder. That was fate worse than death, Eset believed then.

“I’m here,” her voice cracks, temper seething with anxiety. She swiftly draws her arms over Tavina’s back, gathering her close into the space of her chest. She sought to be everything Tavina was to her, the constant she so hopelessly needed. A kiss is pressed to her shoulder as she melds them together, but into the velvet wisps of her neck a voice quivers.

“I- I’m scared for you.”

eset's worry struck through tavina as if it were a lance; the gentle whisper of worry along the back of her shoulder sent a tremour through her. for a moment the sesh almost broke away, almost pushed those satin arms aside.

she was still, and then the first sob came, a racking soundless thing that jerked her entire form against the embrace of eset. and then another, and another, oh, she was losing it. the self-made bridle slipping from errant face, the too-tight bit falling from a bruised mouth;

tavina was not certain she had ever wept so hard before, or if muat-riya's gleaming halls of blue had ever heard the wrenching misery of a broken woman as clearly as her hoarse cries echoed now.