Ravensblood Forest serenity

actively tearing up over them :')
and sorry this got so big...

her voice garbled.

his ears underwater.

yet still he somehow heard it all crystal clear. maybe it was the mind of a man to pick apart some pieces more than other. the way she said i love you or the way she spoke his name. had she always said these things? had he committed an unknown sin in some way? but was it a sin if love was built upon faith? his eyes became sea glass. washed with salt and slightly clouded by it.

she didn't know how to feel.

but she had said it. hadn't she? or did he place things where they weren't? maybe she had wished to pray first for guidance, for strength. he had robbed her of that. what else might he rob her of?

there was a tremble of his lips and a fluttering breath that shook his chest.

and you worry of the spring. his voice was small. much too small for the grand, holy man he had become. leader of his flock upon the isle. he wanted to tell her how badly she didn't understand things. he wanted to tell her how complicated things were.

but she had seen him, so free with the sylph he had brought home. oh how easy and carefree that had been, hadn't it?

heda was different. so different. they had met in hellfire and had forged a church from their shared ashes. they had gathered faces for a good cause together, upon the isle. he trusted her so deeply. how many personal things had been spoken between them?

through these two women he thought of dove.

resting in the earth. his first love. a love he had thought would be until his own time had come to spend his days in Heaven. a woman he had already raised two boys with. two boys who likely disagreed with everything he had done in the wake of their mother's death. who likely resented the aloofness that had plagued him after it.

there was the risk of a repetition, with either woman mind you. that he might crumble whole families once more and be no better than the faces who had hurt heda in the past. he knew not of the past of kacia.

he felt sick.

he blamed himself for everything in that moment.

maybe he had never become a better man. maybe he was no better than the man who had slept unwedded in the spring and mingled among those not his kind to forget it all.

you don't know how to feel, but i dare to think you and God know how you do feel. why worry for spring otherwise?

he did not accuse her. he did not press blame back upon her. he had done this to her. to them. he was certain of that much.