Swiftcurrent Creek Indigo

She allows herself to be disarmed beneath the cupped heat of his palm, with a songbird’s final refrain and her stranger’s gentle question as it drifts in the cooling vesper. Her eyes darken before they lift; at once too vulgar, unladylike, to gorge herself on the true merits of him.

He would feel a red ache in the way she touches her paw to his own, caressing it there, perhaps all the answer another man would need for such a question.

Why was she here?

She had too many responsibilities, the palace to attend, a ruinous history of misfortunes and mistakes. This timing was all wrong, and her brain had been stuck on something; she did not know if she were wolf or coyote, and neither language seemed to fit her mouth. She was broken in ways where the pieces had no matching angles. Suffering feels safer, because if she started to believe she deserved affection, she’d have to find it acceptable in everything that remains unsolved in the quell of her heart. The banks of the river call for retreat. Overwhelming are reasons to be anywhere other than here.

Yet her mind rushes with a forbidden insistence that this is her life to enjoy; to open like a fruit in season and taste the sweet nectar. To worry not about uninvited guests, or judgements. To let want into her body, to bless her half-bred skin, and those muddy-pawed beings who would bud from her own-

Terrifying! She was afraid of what a life like that would do to her. And- perhaps more afraid of a life without it.

She sighs against his chest, writhes beneath the undoing of his mouth, no more heavenly or hellish than she is now. His roughened palm is removed from the side of her face and unfolded before her lips to set a kiss there. When she pulls back, the edge of her mouth curves.

“To be alive,” Eset answers.

Her hunger stills, breathing a pause. She searches his ligthstreaked face, warm and beaded with moisture. But it is his darkness that she wants to know; that pulls her into his orbit.

“Why are you here, Akavir?” She searches him, asking the same. Because he should have turned from her far earlier. Because she brings with her complications. Because there are consequences that will result if she brings her lips to his- and that most alarmingly, she does not want to stop herself from doing so.