Sawtooth Spire a silver whisper, take flight and steal into my mouth

assuming anyone joins, will be slow w/ responses, currently scarce/absented but don't want her falling inactive

in the small hours of dawn, couchant on a flat slab of stone that jut from the earth and commanded a view of the valley below, esme stared broodily through the pall of rain. sometimes it drizzled, mostly it just came down in buckets. all the same, there wasn't much of a view to command these days. the sunrise was hidden behind a brume of greige, somewhere. east. that was the extent of her knowledge. 

her squinted gaze turned to the wet masonry sustaining her, features twisted into a scowl as the last of her rouge dahlia identity seeped from her coat as old blood fled in a thin stream of ruddy-brown. "adieu, lothaire, t’es rien qu’une petit salaud," she said and spat into the drainage.

there weren't many words she knew from her time in french-speaking lierse, but those few that she did know would suffice for the dirty old man's eulogy.

she shifted her weight and thought of the weeks behind her. mostly she pondered on the run in with her mother that had ended on a ... high note, and briefly of her anger fueled quasi-tryst with riley (he'd buggered off, as like as not taking her advice to forget about her after such a toe-curling [and not in a good way] encounter). after the latter, she'd swung back and retraced her steps to track wylla's scent here. 

she'd had a feeling in her bones that wylla's presence in the region was more than just an opportunity for the universe to queer serendipity's pitch for the two, and she was oh-so-very-much ill-disposed to being told what to do, so when wylla shrieked that she wouldn't come near her home and disrespect her, esme had a full mind to do her one better march right up to her doorstep and do just that.

only except, she climbed that stupid mountain for nothing. her mother's trail grew faint and fainter. by the time she was on sagtannet's former portico, the place was ghost town. it wasn't so much that she was expecting a welcoming committee as she was expecting ... someone? anyone! or something. an accost. a trebuchet with her name on it.

it borne repeating, she climbed this stupid mountain ... for nothing! 

then the rain came and turned an already precarious mountainside into a prospective landslide and esme wasn't really in any position to be brazening out karma's tolerance for her bs at the moment. 

thus, upon the deserted mountain she would remain until the skies cleared and the terrain wasn't like to inter her in a burial mound of mud.

it'd been a while, now. long enough to drive esme mad with boredom. 

in the meantime, she peered over the ledge of the stone, eyes making out the vague shapes of treetops though the rain and fog made the vertical drop difficult to discern.

unsurvivable was her reckon, and that was good enough for esme. 

the wolf placed her paws on the lip of the stone and struck her legs out, traipsing like she was navigating a tightrope. she closed her eyes and laughed nervily when she staggered or misstepped, but the adrenaline highballing her veins, of knowing a wind shear or false step could carry her off the edge, was an intoxicating feeling, and the thrill revitalized her as much as it imperiled her.

No trebuchet sat in wait for Esme's arrival, but Riley did.

Sat in wait infers that Riley had arrived some time before Esme. That was empirically incorrect: he had staggered after her, having finally caught her scent just as he was about to abandon all hope -- and the going uphill was so rough and sloppy that he often had to stop and rest his sore haunches before continuing.

Truly, Riley's crucible was that insufferable mountain -- but he climbed it anyway, determined.

When he came across Esme she was playing a hair-raising game, balancing drunkenly along the lip of the cliff's outer edge. Any joy Riley might have felt to see the woman (who felled his scabbard) was stolen by the realization she was either playing Cliff Roulette, or considering it.

His fur stood on end as he limped forward, breath held. Stupidly, Riley couldn't think of anything to say at all -- so he just stared in equal parts shock, equal parts efferent longing -- towards the woman who may have dodged his quivering arrows but very much enamored his soul.

not sure where this is in his timeline, but whatevs lol

she would have so very much preferred the trebuchet. and in truth, her own impact would have been softer than the impact of her hard eyes when they landed on riley as she picked along the edge of the pedestal and found him staring at her, seemingly unable to get a word out. 

if this roulette is what it took to keep the gentle sylph quieted, very well then. esme continued to walk perilous on the lip of the stone with an unreadable expression, body language writ barely legible. 

her puppy appeared to have recuperated from his attack well enough, she noted by the less gruesome wound on his haunch, though he still favored that leg. esme took her eyes away from his appearance and let her feet exaggerate some imbalanced steps. "ever heard of l'appel du vide? the call of the void," she asked, calmly museful despite the deep offense and ire she felt about his encore presence.

Damn, was her gaze hard. Riley felt it slice through him, remorseless -- a chill raked past his heart.

She continued her nerve-chilling walk. Riley nearly called out to her, but something about the flatness of her gaze suggested any breath he wasted would be better served yelling at the sun or the clouds -- she was unnmovable.

No trace of resentment in her voice, unlike the icy clout of her gaze. As with all things Esme, Riley was woefully confused.

The call of the void, what..? What did that have to do with what she was doing? He looked nervously at the precipice. The drop was unfavorable. Unfavorable. He kept getting hung up over that word, his thoughts cyclical and confusing as Esme continued her deadly pirouette just out of reach.

He fretted like a cat standing on ice. There was some dissonance to this meeting that eluded him, but he could feel it mounting. "No." The boy murmured at last, tearing his gaze away. If she jumped, he did not want to see it -- he did not want to think of Esme some hundred feet below, turning dry stone a brilliant pastel pink and somber red with her explodent remains. "I left the Saints." He blurted suddenly -- inappropriately, maybe -- his mismatched gaze coming to rest apprehensively on the cliff-walker.

he blurted, she kept her finesse. "the who?" esme asked, not reaching very far into their history to infer the name of his (former) pack ... cult ... menage a trois. whatever. had he told her the name of it, even? as per usual, esme was focused on esme things and any inforrmation being fed to her that didn't benefit her or interest her was practically useless. 

either way, a few pulsings later she did muse on something riley had once told her about being called cloying names by its leader, donovan. "mmmm, the peaches guy," she remembered with a stepford smile, canting her head askance to speculate on why he might do just that— leave the pack he once sought to influence her towards. she raised her gaze to riley suddenly, holding his eyes with neither brightness nor admiration for his accomplishment. 

esme was as much a dead-end for riley as esme was for esme. 

a wind buffeted her and she stutter-stepped, "the name describes the phenomenon, really. you've never looked down from a cliff and felt the inexplicable urge to jump?" she wondered aloud, staring over the lip of the jutting stone, feeling the impulse surge in her breast like some huge swell of a wave. "there's nothing abnormal about it. self-preservation overrides these fickle little glitches in our brains, tells us not to do it," she informed, "well. most of the time." the pads of her toes palpated the stonework's edge, but don't you ever just wonder— 

"you leave these saints, do whatever it is you do inbetween, now you've come and found me. 'coincidental', considering i told you to forget about me. seems a bit ... intentional? hm?"

it'd been weeks since their last meet, and she was beginning to think he had the sense to ignore his own call of the void and preserve himself. instead, riley jumped.

The who? Riley visibly sagged, his own finesse far gone. He'd remembered distinctly how unfavorable Esme's opinion was of Donovan, and now, he wondered if he'd made it up or worse -- had completely misunderstood.

Peaches, right. Riley's ears swept forward in silent exclamation - Ahah! You do know. His victory was short-lived, for Esme's head-tilt (ahem - hair tilt) and sly smile perplexed him.  Moreover, the absolute deadpan of Esme's gaze seemed to communicate she wasn't following, or she wasn't interested. Riley's heart sank further.

He remained silent.

Esme continued, taking half-steps along the ridge that would chill the souls of even the stoutest of creatures. He could not say he'd ever looked at a drop with anything but fear. That Esme would regard the sudden drop with something akin to interest was a marvel in of itself beyond Riley's comprehension.

She switched gears, though he hated the way her toes seemed to toy with the abyss. Back to the Saints, back to him. Riley's ears folded backwards in either shameful admission, or something like nervousness.

He thought she'd be happy that he'd listened to her. Maybe proud. Anything but this foreign emotion of total disinterest, as if he were a slug on the side of her cave. Unwanted.

Unimportant.

"Why wouldn't I intentionally find you?" Bonehead asked, feeling completely blown aside -- as if they'd not almost shared something intimate. As if Esme had not seized his heart as well as his common sense, and chucked it over the void. Riley's tail lashed in unspoken agitation -- Why was she so deadset against him? What hateful, ugly thing did she see in him or herself that had her constantly pushing him away?

He fumbled. Words came at glacial interludes, a jumbled mess. "You --" A pause. Synchronity at its most dissonant. Cycle. Uncycle. Break. Repeat. "You feel a pull towards that --" Riley gestured incredulously towards the drop, continuing. "But not towards me?" Why? Hurt flooded Riley's features, for he was inexperienced with heartbreak and had no way to hide how he felt.

his threnodial heartsong hit its lowest notes and she saw the disappointment, or whatever plaintive emotion, claim the estate of his features. her own expression was groomed to its regular apathy, eyes unmoving as the slug on the side of her cave became more greedy and discontent with his cranny.

wanting more of her, more from her? always—!  always wanting more! he was truly a man in her eyes now, for that alone. 

"why wouldnt i?" 

"because i specifically told you not to. you disrespect me, even now!" she gusted, seeking to buffet her words against him like he was the one that wantoned in the wind atop the rock shelf, wooing death with pacing soles. the nightgowned woman edged back even more, poised only by the grace of how long the bend of her heels could endure her weight at the stone's verge.

woe riley, trying to make an honest woman and wifey out of a gorgon; she, the un-get-at-able junk trinket he saw for a ruby when she was only some false jewel sitting on a pawn shop's mantle. not precious, not rare, and most certainly never of estimable worth, not in a condition that was so very used.

he was unsettled by this, she thought, by her agency to say i don't want it. empowered, was that what she felt? for the assertion to leave her mouth and not be undone by some hell-broth coaxed down her throat.

yet, even so, the creance that tied lucidity to the gauntlets of her mind came loose, trying to fly her away into the darkest eyries of her mind that she did not want to visit. 

she skirted the talons of those usurping memories and bled her gaze over him, reading the agitation he penned onto the vellum he bared to her now. she curiously plagiarized his semblance, lashing her tail, tooling her ears around to no purpose in a mimicking, feigning way— trying on the intriguing behaviors of an emotion on him she couldn't name.

riley's tongue plied at words, pausing and lurching, effortful; a mind at work trying to read between lines that didn't exist. there was no context for the situation for him to make sense of, no book of esme in any library for him to find. how would he reconcile that within himself ... all the more so, could he ever? she could not very well pull down the pedestal he'd placed her upon. the blueprints of his heartbreak were drawn up by him alone, 

and esme could not concieve of any notion of leading him on. it was not in her nature, this taking of responsibility for the consequences of her ad-libbed carryings-on; much less to at least have the grace to repent of it now to this boy-to-man who'd scried her so fancifully in some fibbing pool. 

she could think of no other reason for his persistence to espouse her. it preyed on her mind— the tiring quarry.

esme rocked off her heels and turned to follow his gesture as he put forth some rivalry between himself and the ledge, sloping to peer towards the bottom. a pall of mist obscured the depth of the fall and sharp outcroppings of rockshard along the face of the cliff descended into its midst, insinuating a most dignified plummet.

he continued to talk. she gazed into quietus.

the thespian talents of his mien were wasted on an inattentive audience. the verselet of fresh heartbreak, a chapter unnoticeable yet inscribed so plainly across his face,

but esme was absorbed in the distraction of what it might feel like to answer the call. her guts were spilled into the upturned palms of rathe impulse and she could not take her eyes away from their concentration on the plunge. her mind, on its lowest ebb, wanted nothing more than to release inhibition

and her body, heedless of her consciousness to it, listed precariously as the ground seemed to loom up in her vision, vignetting her focus to the importunings of such destructive impulse. "mired in such emotion. you mistake me terribly," she asserted, a voice eclipsed in shadows of some distant reverie; flat, distracted.

spring-operated muscles flexed under her skin. "i. feel. nothing."

suddenly, she turned her head to face him, throwing back her head to laugh breathlessly. "my mother called me a cunt, isn't that touching? all heart, that woman." her eyes sparked like flintlock. "i only called her a whore. tangentially." it was a valid question i asked. her flame guttered gaze drifted back towards the drop. "one less cunt in the world could be a pity, or perhaps a boon. i've yet to decide which would inconvenience her more."

Esme kept a grave face, cold as as a subterranean cave.

Was it true -- had he disrespected her by pursuing his heart? In discomfort, Riley writhed like an earthworm underwater. It wasn't! No! He didn't mean --

She edged back, her words laying across him like the harsh nip of winter's wind. It wasn't that he didn't want her to say no -- it was that he didn't understand; why, why was she so beyond reproach when he was constantly reduced to frayed batwings beneath her feet? Why was it she got the high mantle while he got the dirt? And why, everloving why, was he not good enough for her?

She mocked him then, a grotesque display which possibly hurt the Redleaf more than any of her sharpened words ever could. He was reduced in that moment to a blithering child, an idiot -- and all because she couldn't handle the frightening way love -- or commitment -- encircled her like a noose.

For a long while there was silence while Esme peered down the darkening path, and while Riley nursed his wounds. She listed while Riley picked at mental scabs left at her behest; sure, let her plunge to her death, and end it all -- coward!

He didn't pretend to understand the meaning of her tone, but his eyes were imbued with fire and his fur flared to life when Esme claimed she felt nothing. "THAT'S A LIE!" Riley shouted, the stones clattering under his forceful baritone.

"A LIE! YOU --" Had he fingers to shake, he might have tremblingly pointed at her in choking fury: "You're afraid -- you --" His thoughts roared to life around him like a miasma of spinning sharks. For a moment, the boy struggled to pull the sentence he wished to the surface. "You tell yourself you feel nothing, because you are afraid of what you feel -- or you can't handle it. I don't know. I'm not a fucking expert. But I do know one thing, and that is you are lying to yourself as well as me. You feel nothing? What a joke -- you hide yourself from the world, because you're afraid of what you really feel -- BUT I AM NOT A PAWN TO BE THROWN AWAY!" Riley bleated, his heart beating in beautiful dissonance. "I'm not! You treat me like a child and only think about yourself and you hurt everyone around you because you can't face your reflection! I don't care about your mom, I don't care about what you've done in the past --" Here Riley's voice hitched from its deep timber, the foundation of his strength splintering into hissing rubble. "You treat me like I'm a phantom of your past. Like I'm beneath you. Why? I just --" He grasped for meaning, for a buoy in the stormy tempest that was their confusing meeting -- "I just want to be there for you, and you keep pushing me away."

he called her a liar and it was true. she was a liar in so many ways. she felt things, but anger mostly, and often, and most recently especially towards him. she'd given him so many opportunities to walk away, and he rejected that opportunity at every turn despite her unchanging sentiments. her mother brought that anger to surface most masterfully, although the woman deserved maybe only quarter of it for the wrongs she'd done by her daughter in the short time she had her under lock and key. 

"oh, spare me the—" she replied flippantly, but he'd already started dissecting her psyche with his fumbly, dilettante hands. be careful where you put that knife, sir, but esme let him vent his feelings with distrait patience. he was correct on a number of things, once he became less hitchthroated and more accusatory, but she wouldn't give him a cookie for hitting a mark or two on a stationary target.

esme started to formulate her own psychological profile of him, but mentally did away with it once she realized she'd already done that once before and it was too boring a task to endure twice. she huffed with growing disinterest and stared down her nose at his talking head. "oh yes, a pawn," she edged in with an incredulous air; if he was a pawn, he was a willing one. she never sought him out to play on his emotions, it always came back to riley seeking her out (stalking, really), simpering and imploring her attention. and she gave it to him, perhaps not always in ways he was desirious of, but esme refused his victim plancard with scarce a glance. 

she found it passing strange how deeply offended he was becoming, and pooched her lips with theories of her own howling dervishes in her mind. when he finally started to stutter-speak again, esme cleared her throat. "do you feel better now? or do you feel stupid?" she wondered, setting her head at an angle of scrutiny. she squinted her eyes and then straightened her posture again. "hm. i'm not sure you even know which direction you want to go in." she said.

"you say you're a pawn, but i've never used you to my advantage," she swept down from the scarp, away from impending divine judgement, and drew towards him thoughtfully, "but as it has been recently brought to my attention that i am a cunt ... well, what am i to know? except that you've been so utterly disadvantageous to me that i've walked away twice ... or has it been three times? i suppose it's besides the point. or, perhaps not," all of her present annoyance was distilled to her tailtip, which twitched nonstop, but her voice was tulle: light, crystalline, and thrown over a silk vesture that kept her modest despite all else its transparency revealed. 

"perhaps step out of my way, if i hurt everyone around me. stop trying to be there and stop trying to wedge me into your idea of how a woman should behave when you know nothing about her or her phantoms." she very nearly lost her composure in want of a snarl to punctuate her words, but it only rose as a grizzle in the back of her throat.

the lion, the witch, and the audacity of this bitch.

"and you call me a liar? you're lying to me in a single breath, very bold of you, saying you don't care but 'wanting to be there for me'? what does 'being there' look like to you? i don't think you even know, because no one's ever 'been there' for you." esme yanked the table around, so very forceful. if he would presume to know her, she would mimic that too. "have you ever heard the word projection before? you're doing a lot of it. someone has hurt you, and it's not me, in fact ... " vehement denial, whether or not it was true. she had given him consent of her time, of her body, and he threw it in her face. she clenched her teeth behind firm lips; a muscle leapt in her cheek. "i believe we've touched that nerve before."

"was it your father, mm?" she gave his face a lingering look, waiting for any nuance she could check. "your mother? is that why you follow me like i am yours, argue that i treat you such as i would a child? i beg your pardon, i would never let a child do to me what you tried and failed to do." the implication made her want to bite his nose off, but she held the violent tic in abeyance. why did she give him so much clemency? 

"so, who then? who was it?"

Riley's tirade was over, but the buckling of his composure had only just begun. Now he had no choice but to ride the wave of his emotional tsunami; he watched Esme like an animal caged.

Did he feel better now? No -- the answer was no. "You always make me feel stupid." Riley forced, a mumble of words that tumbled from his mouth like an upended house of cards. Why did he endure it? What good had he gotten of any of this, besides torment and mounting feelings of strangled inadequacy?

Maybe he was being a victim, maybe he was guilty of being just as self-involved. Riley was incapable of such rational introspection in that moment, because the great battering ram that had been Esme's continuous abject disinterest had splintered the gates of Riley's confidence, and now nothing but bitterness and hurt outpoured forth.

At least she had moved away from the embankment; for that, some edge of relief softened the hard clap of torment within. Each syllable that rolled off of Esme's tongue was a dart well aimed; a slap, over and over and over, to his reddened and dismayed cheeks. "You won't let me!" Riley interjected, feeling once more adrift on a bucking and furious sea. "I don't know anything about you because you won't let me in." It wasn't just as if Riley only wanted Esme for -- well, what stirred under her tail -- there was something about her that captured his heart and delivered a sparkle to his eyes. It wasn't just puppy love -- not to Riley -- it was a sense of finding someone else just as fucked up as him, someone who belonged to that same community of wretchedness and shattered peace. Someone else with just as many frayed edges and jagged pieces, that somehow fit together perfectly in gilded kintsukuroi. 

How could a bumbling idiot like him even begin to explain? He felt stung anew as she accused him of wanting to control his woman -- that was just the thing, wasn't it? And it wasn't true! He was earnestly convinced of that.

Riley had never had much mental armor. Each word flung from Esme's mouth unhinged the soft carapaces holding him upright, until at last he was bald and stripped of any decency or rejoinder in which to defend himself. She was right too, that he was just as broken -- that he had never had someone there for him. His jaw worked in a feeble reply that never aired; how could he explain he just wanted to try -- to discover what it was like to be deserving of a tranquil heart and mind?

And why not? Why couldn't they try together? What law, what order, forbade them from climbing out from the jagged fangs of their demonds, which had held to them like steel jaws their entire life?

He hung his head. "No, it wasn't my father." Riley mumbled, tail low and disarrayed fur falling into place along his hackles and cheeks. Then, Esme asked of his mother -- for that, Riley's gaze burned as it jumped up to her in resentful silence.

As if going for the tender-spots and raking him over the coals for his mother was not enough, Esme had the wherewithal to take her harpoon and broadside Riley like a stunned fish -- by bringing back to memory the anguishing time he had tried and failed to mate with her. Riley's mouth opened and closed, his eyelids fluttering -- his breath exhaled in a hurt plume from his dark nose.

Not even Laurel, who had simply been indifferent to him, had ever clawed so deep. Not even Indra, who had tried to drown him, had ever set her fangs so cruelly against him -- but Esme drew no quarter.

"You. It was you." Laurel might have started tradition by showing Riley nothing but a rocky path in his early life, but it was Esme, encountered on the trail, that had turned him from his upward climb, and condemned his soul to an endless plain of salt and brambles.

wow i really gave you nothing to respond to here 

she was too many fragments on the floor. better suited for an urn on a dusty shelf than being bore upon someone else's shards as the gold dust inlay of kintsugi, to forge some ornamental but otherwise useless crockery. 

the atoms holding her together were tired. 

how was one to transform ashes into something so symbolic as kintsukuroi? smelt it down into some grey lacquer, mix in copper and call it gold? was that what he wanted to add to his life?

a composite only useful as asphalt repair for the potholes in her soul. likely even less useful than that. they were a karmic mismatch; everything he deserved was everything she did not. 

esme spoke firmer through his heated interjections, brows sinking to form a V. there is no skeleton key for you! i'm inside and everybody is out, i've boarded up the windows and i've clapped the doors in irons. must i also be bare from skin to bone to even feel seldom at home?

when everything seemed to come to a lingering pause, and he dropped his head at mention of his father, her gaze nested searchingly into his features. two blazing comets hurled into the black hole she felt enter the atmosphere between them in that moment.

they burned out so quickly she looked away, sights crash landing as craters in the earth beneath their feet. 

then she was back, the ferocity of his response to her accusation of his mother leading her by the nose. "i think i'm getting warmer," was singsonged upon seeing the resentment go up like brushfire on his formerly downcast look. she pulled back, rather, in a way, pleased with herself for provoking embers he rarely (had he ever?) made manifest to her.

by her final remarks, he was visibly pulsating hurt. she was unsure what particular reference had done the job, but if she was surprised that her words domiciled any deliberate malice with which she could injure him again, she hid it without conscious intention.

a lapse of silence fit between them, the gavel in suspension— 

"you. it was you." he indicted.

she made a dismissive noise and watched him a moment longer, her gaze loitering on the properties of his face. if it was her, she thought, then he hurts himself willfully by coming to me.

a museful silence followed, no immediate indignity jumping to the tip of her tongue. he had to know by now that there was nothing in esme for him but pain. wasn't that what he said? "you always make me feel stupid." 

she hasn't missed that. thus so, she wouldn't make him feel stupid anymore. 

drily, "as you insist." a shade of doubt passed over her face, but she didn't dispute it. her eyes cooled. there was no apology coming into flower, what else was there to say about it? so his lacquered heart was glazed by an implacable grief in the end, by her own hand. 

the wolf tilted her chin upwards and looked out towards the misting crag,

considering considering.

she turned and padded to sit by the cliff. again, wordless, presenting him ample opportunity to leave, as dignified as he wanted to be with her back turned to him.

the mausoleum-quiet silence was crannied by sudden pealing and stentorian thunder.

Of course she was getting warmer. If Riley's tender-spots were the cubboard holding fresh-baked cookies within them, Tiercel's nose was the slavering hound -- and hounds always got their piece.

She didn't fight back. She didn't deny it, or tell him he was wrong. Instead, she airily -- and flippantly -- demured in such a way that had Riley's temper flare, as if a gas stove turned on. He forced his seething frustrations in an exhale out through his nose.

Fine. As you insist. With no riposte to fire back upon, Riley fell to silence while Esme meandered forward. He watched her out of the corner of his eye, refusing to give her the satisfaction of his full attention.

A better man might have accepted this loss gracefully, but Riley was in many ways still an adolescent. He felt his ineptitude had hung him by the tail, meanwhile Esme seemed to have a field day with his every sensitive and tender spot.. She was the rook, and he the pigeon -- fat, hamfisted, and unprepared for the harshness of the world.

He was mad, too. Why couldn't she try? Why was she so against it, why was she self-sabotaging her and himself in the process? He honestly believed the two of them had a chance to climb out of the tigertrap of their past together, and here she was cutting the rope of their ladder before their ascent ever even began.

Riley wanted to leave right then. Make a point - say fuck it, I'm audi and jet -- but his stubborn infatuation with Esme got in the way of his common sense. Also, he might be a glutton for punishment. So, Riley came quietly alongside Esme and sat along the precipice, inspecting the misty clouds as they rolled on below. Even though Esme threw barb after barb at him, Riley didn't want to go. He didn't want to prove to her that she was right. He still hung onto the dream, even if it was slowly withering away under Esme's ruthless tongue.

After a while of this communal silence, Riley stirred. He would leave soon -- he felt it -- but at least he hadn't said anything he regretted.

esmé couldn't understand his anger towards her at her any better than riley could understand the terrible and unremediable extent of hers; his idealized fantasies about repairing eachother and navigating the world fingers interlocked with homespun solace was all that it was. a fantasy. some called those notions a fools paradise, but with esmé in it there was no paradise, and riley would quickly find that true as well.

but make no mistake of it, the woman never sabotaged herself. she was perfectly content to be alone. alone didn't deprive her of any sensation, none which she could fathom at any rate; riley was left more unprosperous of the two in regards to that. but he was good at metastasizing himself to foreign bodies, he would find what he wanted more easily, and he could eventually go about his life complacently knowing he'd set himself right and found a woman willing to endure his flights of desipience ... and occasional erectile anomalies, while esmé simply survived.

she felt him ease to sit beside her and she let out a soft huff, or perhaps more like a resigned sigh. esmé deliberated on her hesitation to just jump and get it over with, and concluded she might not find release but instead an eternity of boredom waiting for her, and that was torture unto itself.

she couldn't fathom what riley was thinking about, nor did she feel so inclined to ask. maybe it was just crickets up there. she couldn't conceive of a single time she'd recieved an answer to that question from a man that wasn't some dumbass thought that has no business being said out loud.

she'd come to figure menfolk had a "nothing box" in their heads where women had diegeses and elaborate bug-out strategies locked into place. riley, though, seemed to fall somewhere in the middle where he had fantasies and strategies— it just so happened they involved his positive taxis harassing her negative taxis. 

after a fashion, he stirred beside her and she tilted her muzzle slightly towards him, eyes tracking his movement. perhaps he hadn't been sitting in the nothing box when all was said and done. maybe, just maybe, he'd reckoned with the infeasibilities in his pursuit of esmé and was ready to be the one to leave. she blinked languorously at him and checked him with an uptick of her brow, but said nothing more than an insouciant "adieu?"

<333

Their silence remained unbroken, save an early huff on Tiercel's behalf.

When Riley stood he felt doubt and dread fill him, compelling him to anchor his feet there. He pushed on.

It did not feel right to leave; he resented Esme immensely for it. Yet for now, he was handily bested -- Riley needed somewhere quiet to retreat, somewhere safe he could pour over the 'nothing box' and delve into what went wrong, where.

Adieu? He blinked, scanning her features in confusion. If she meant goodbye, she didn't seem sorry to see him leave -- that was par for the course at this point.

"Goodbye." Riley said, words as weighted as his soul felt. For his selfish sake he hoped it was not the last time he saw her. Down the slope he went, fighting the urge to look back every so often. No -- Esme was firmly behind him... and he was smart, he would keep it that way.