Two Eyes Cenote Burrowing

“It is not the creek,” her lips give a curl, for his sake. She is not the same woman with whom he’d shared a time in the valley. A more controlled, affixed figure, who could not meet his gaze. She settles for the water near their feet and softly lowers into a silent seat beside him.

An arboreal scent incites affection, memories of their wild cadence. The wound; his face; she longs to soothe it, but her hand stills. He is a stranger she knew intimately, and not at all. He should have never been her’s. She should have let him alone, before he'd become entangled in affairs that would needlessly complicate his life. But it was not too late to extract the creek wolf from the schemes of her desert. He was owed that.

“Back in the valley, I saw something in you that I recognized. Hurt.” Eset’s eyes came as high as his chest, following the edge of one shoulder before turning away.

“These are hallowed walls for my people. These walls will hurt you, Akavir.” As they already had. With a breath, her eyes trail up to his chin, teeth clenching to cease tears before they can evolve. “It is not your duty as a lover to remain and accept this acrimony.”

She thought of them, then. The imagined child who was as much his as they had been her’s. And how every last evidence of them had been wiped away into nothing. Her body's failure. She cannot tell him how she'd dreamt they had his smile, and his eyes.

“I am sorry,” she breaks, a voice scarcely raised over the trilling cenotes.