Two Eyes Cenote Burrowing

She woke from those arcadian hours, when the palace was silent and there was none to catch her with sympathy in the hallways. The medicine woman slept. Eset crept past her, every muscle in her waist tightening as they clicked again into place.

She understood she’d be marked an alien from her kind; a shade amid mothers’ fruitful gleam. There was no use for women with sterile wombs. She imagined their insular stares. She wasn’t ready for that.

She wasn’t ready for him.

A black shadow by the water. She hesitates.

Seeing him fractures what had been dammed. But she cannot look without shame; without seeing the prominent snout and scar that stood out unmistakably in reflections of the cenote water. Once traced with her lips, now swollen by her peoples’ violence.

She steps out from the dark into his same pool of light, trying to remember the trick of control that had been her’s.

“You're here,” she breathes, an emotive inhale and then a frown following wordlessly. Because @Akavir should have gone. He needed to be.