Fox's Glade [m] glued back together again

@Yakone let me know if you want anything changed! Marking as mature, just because it's "the morning after" lol

In the last rays of sunlight, Merrit realized he had never thought about what his lover would be like.

He had seen beauty in many women. Strength, intelligence, gentleness, ferocity. And he had always felt the need to protect them, even though every woman in his life had been more than capable of protecting themselves. But never had he considered a family for himself, a wife he might call his own.

They still lay there together beneath the swaying branches of Fox's Glade as the stars blinked into the early night sky, by that tree next to the stream that marked Kaito's grave. Wait till you do something wrong, it was as though Arlette's voice still whispered through the trickle of the stream, you will see mother's real face.

And he wondered if mother saw him now, what she would say of this.

as merrit mulled thoughts of his family and the ghost of his mother, yakone too thought of the woman who had given her life. she wondered if reigi had felt this, once - before komodo, before her children existed. she wondered what she would think of the man yakone had found.

she didn't even know his name.

she reached out to nose his cheek lightly, wondering if he had already realized that she would forever be silent. he was beautiful, her fated stranger, but his eyes... the longer she looked, the more she saw it. a haunted aspect, a permanent sorrow that had made its home in his gaze. it was painfully familiar to yakone. her mother once bore that same wounded countenance. and just as she had then, yakone now felt that she would do anything to chase the shadows from his eyes and replace it with light.

The girl, too, remained quiet, and he wondered what she thought. He realized she had said nothing since they had met, nothing throughout their entire entanglement, nothing in the quiet aftermath. If she thought anything, she held her thoughts to herself.

Yet though she was absent of words, she spoke in other ways, through gentle touches, which she offered even now. She had not run from him, nor had he run from her, and perhaps a part of him had been aware of what he was doing when they had come together. Of what they were perhaps starting together.

He looked to her. A dove, she seemed, her only mark a bleeding heart.

"What is your name?" he finally asked. His voice felt out of place, as though breaking something sacred by speaking into the silence.

her name. he asked after her name, and yakone was so overcome by emotion that she could do nothing but burst into quiet, sudden tears. oh, how she longed to tell him; in a whisper, in a shout, in a song. she would have given anything, in that moment, for a single word to slip past the invisible barrier which had held them back for so long.
yakone, she wanted to tell him. my name is yakone. how long had it been since she'd heard her own name?
she blinked the tears away and sought to bury her face in her lover's fur. only silence and tears served to answer his question.

And like that, he understood the reason for her silence.

He felt his heart burn with sharp agony when his question provoked her to tears. To sobs that were as quiet as the night, yet louder than anything he had ever heard. Her eyes, they spoke of intelligence held by creatures of speech, and sound. Intelligence her tongue could not reflect.

Merrit welcomed her into his embrace again and moved to wrap himself around her. "I understand," he said, and though she might never speak his name, he added softly, "my name is Merrit, some call me Theseus. But you may make another name for me. One that you can speak."

He did not know if his lover had a name, but he wished to have something to call her, "and together, we will find a name that I may call you."