Hushed Willows as spring opens (touching, skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose

✹☾❂

 

Kincaid wasn’t happy with her, that much was clear, but she hoped that she could melt his heart a little bit with some well-intentioned nearness and a heartfelt apology. If he didn’t care, he wouldn’t worry. He did care, so he did worry — plus, she had been running dangerous errands and being rather foolhardy about it, with not telling anyone where she was going. Clearly, Eleuthera still had a lot to learn. She bit her lip and pushed her nose into his chest, whispering an “I’m sorry," into the soft furs. She was sorry, she was, but what she really meant to say was

I love it when you care —
“I don’t want you to be worried about me."
You’re here now.
“I’ll try to be more careful."
Does that mean you’ll leave when this is all over?

Eleuthera was thankful when he changed the subject and moved onward.

They now moved side by side, and there was little of the teasing and flirtation that there was before. The silliness was gone, but what replaced it was far more valuable: genuine understanding and care. The little troublemaker and the rambler, worried for the safety of each other even though there was no helping what the fates had in store. Seeing the truth of each other, while not desiring to control or change it. To Eleuthera, that was far more special.

Eleuthera worked to procure the memory of the Sunspire from the depths of her mind — she had only heard these stories secondhand —  and shared them as they walked. “No, but we moved when I was really little. I had to be carried most of the way." Eleuthera wished she had details to color the story, details she knew Kincaid wanted, but her mind drew blank on anything more than the cursory happenings. “I don’t remember much of it, but one of my brothers died, and my mothers didn’t think it was safe. They gathered wolves and started a pack here. It was a sanctuary, called Elysium." Had she mentioned that before? The woman blinked as she nosed the tendrils of a willow out of her direct path, feeling the curtail of dangling leaves fall softly against her shoulder, behind her. 

“It was fun. We had parties, and packs from all around would come." Now, having been relatively well-traveled, the lilac woman understood Elysium to be a very strange place, with strange customs. It was perhaps the only pack she had seen which actively invited strangers inside and did not maintain their borders. Sometimes, Eleuthera wondered if their lax policies had been their final undoing. 

Eleuthera looked up at Kincaid, studying his roughhewn features as they walked, and immediately had a sense that she knew so little of Kincaid and his life. It was hard to sum up the total of one’s experiences, made even harder when one had years of hearty travel under their belt.