Wheeling Gull Isle xviiii. letting your guard down is honourable

She might've started - were it anyone else. 

As it is, she has always been aware of him, even when separated. As if a magnifying force pushed them together, she was pulled forth at the sight of him - more so at the lack of, a fraction of her mind always devoted to his whereabouts and pondering when he might be with her once more. 

It would be sickening in its sweetness if she weren't so deliriously happy. 

That same draw was what tugged her towards him - tail picking up a wag and lips tilting to beam in his direction as she caught sight of him - on nimbling steps with deliberate delay, allowing her halfgaze to roam over him with similar idle appreciation. 

"I'm sorry, love," she murmured when she had reached his side, extending on her toes to brush her lips over his jowls placatingly - her lilt vaguely affected by bemusement at his boyish antics. "I'm not used to sleeping."

His presence in her bed was a most welcome one, Rhælla had felt she might burst into tears the first night he appeared outside her den - readily pulling him over the threshold to join her. There was little that topped the feeling of being wrapped in her lover's embrace, free to at last hold each other in the night. His touch stayed her night terrors but she'd grown accustomed to sleeping sparingly - it would take some time before she could doze soundly through the night, even with Daeg there to hold her - and they did not abate completely, instead morphing into something altogether new. 

The terror and memories were displaced, the visions taken over by imagery of her past and present - intermixed with confusing snippets of distorted realities and things that had yet to be. Daegon featured in many, both in her recollections of the Kingdom and in the glimpses of her future. Though she enjoyed the dreams, she couldn't deny that they unnerved and disturbed her - her great-granddam was rumored to have been gifted with sight yet Rhælla put little stock in such notions. 

Still, as her lilac orb grazed over the form of her lover - the most recent figment replayed in her mind's eye. 

A moon's phase and more had passed before she was granted permission to attend Icadearian Court. Lucavon and his mother had concocted a fib about an illness contracted on the journey from her Empire to dissuade any suspicion or speculation about the newly crowned Queen's absence. 

The truth of it was that they'd spent the time breaking her down, molding her into something compliant - a marionette to jerk and make dance upon strings. 

She'd fought - oh, how she'd fought - but she'd proven weak; the tear of her flesh and crunch of her bone spiting her inner vows to remain silent, remain detached, remain unfractured. 

In the end, what use was it? Better to save herself some pain - and some flesh - even if it meant bowing. She could be compliant, meek, she could survive. 

There was some joy to be had on this day, for at last she would feel the warmth of sun on her skin. She would breathe fresh air, drink in the sights of forests and birds and people with deprived, ravenous eyes. 

And though their religion was not the same as her own, she would be permitted to join the congregation.

Lucavon had forbidden her to practice her craft or commune with her gods but she'd become skilled in adopting an expression of false attentiveness - allowing her thoughts to wander within the freedom of her mind, where even Lucavon could not harm her.  

The caverns of the Icadearian holy grounds were not as welcoming as the Steeple of her father's gods - though perhaps she was biased in this - yet, it felt as wondrous as heaven itself after the confinement she'd endured. And no one looked at her oddly, in this place of worship, for the tears that freely coursed her cheeks. 

As she begged her gods - old and new - with silent urgency, she was but another overcome woman amongst the assemblage, discernable only by the rage in her eyes that set her apart. 

It was as her prayers died and her gaze lifted that she met his - inferno against purple fire. Intense, heated, unreadable as he stared from across the room packed with bodies. 

Those eyes would star in her dreams, the spotlight of the visions that began to flood in - that very night. 

Even then, he'd been her destiny though she hadn't yet known it, she thinks as her eye wanders - made certain by the clarity of the nightvisions after their reunion. 

Not only this but the glimpses from the night before. 

A winter that had not come yet, a night where she was found in her mate's arms - surrounded by their pack, their family. Laughter was abundant as liquor and tale passed and shared, the Lady abstaining as her husband brushed his muzzle tenderly across her swollen stomach. 

Fuzzy, unfocused children in all shade of fire and smoke and soot with eyes of flame and sea and amethyst. Days of sunshine and racing along the beach, her chiding tones teasing their children about the sand they'd coated themselves in and how their father would not recognize them for it. 

A dark daughter brushed by copper, a bairn of her own tucked between her paws. Rhæ's voice teasing as it whispered in Daeg's ear that they should have a few more, before they got too old.

Aye, she cherished the dreams. She could only pray to her gods that they came true, were not but the imaginations of a slumbering mind - yet, they were so vivid, so startling that they drove her from sleep, from her mate's arms. A blessing and a curse. 

At last, she tore her gaze reluctantly from him, allowing it to cast about the gardens. "I've finished up here if you'd like to go somewhere," the niteborn suggests, an idea forming. The rains had dampened the soil and watered her infant plantlings - she'd woken to the drum of it against their cave in the grey of dawn though she'd only pressed closer against the fires of Daegon's pelt, allowing herself to drift back into the black void of a peaceful sleep. The infant foliage should be fine for now. 

"There's a hidden cove on the eastern shores that I'm fond of, I thought you might like to see it," she adds, chewing her lip shyly.