Blackfeather Woods nothing but the burnt edge of an unfinished history

i think someone's lovesick. oops.

He watches as Potema approaches him, trying to ignore the catch in his throat at the sight of her as she morphs from the dark: gaunt and wild eyed. She makes no move to hide her approach and Atli does not rise from the ground as the High Priestess approaches. He offers no excuses: no attempts to try to paint himself in a good light. He’s not good and he accepts her rage. He has earned it, he knows. “High Priestess,” Her title falls from his lips the sound raw as it leaves his throat but with undeniable reverence. He could be more than what he was: he sees this now. He alone is responsible for his actions thus far in his life — it was high time he stopped blaming Ragnar ( and everyone else ). He does not know if Potema is a second chance kind of woman, but he wants one: a second chance. He wants it so bad that he’s willing to do the ( perhaps ) dumbest thing he’s done yet in his life and put his life on the line for it. From his damaged eye she looks like an apparition: a wisp of smoke that flickers and licks like a flame that seeks to grow into an inferno. In his good eye she is pale and stark against the dark palette of the woods and angry. Gods if she isn’t the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. Some cynical and dark part of him thinks that if he’s to die by her decree then dying by her teeth would not be so bad.

Atli doesn’t want to die. Not yet. He wants to live and he wants to atone to her …for her. “I have earned your ire, High Priestess,” He looks at her paws, ears slicking back against his skull as he speaks. “and I know I do not deserve your forgiveness. I know I deserve any punishment you see fit to give me.” He also knows that he’ll take it: so long as she is the one to make the judgement call because it’s her that he’s came back for. She pulls him in like the gravity of a super nova; and even if he could fight it he wouldn’t. Even as she bares down upon him like the goddess Hel he’s enraptured, he thinks the world of her though he barely knows her. She put a spell on him the night that they conceived Vaati and tha tmagic has seeped into his bones and swallowed his heart until he notices no other woman ( which is quite an accomplishment for him, admittedly ). He doesn’t want any other woman. He wants Potema. “I was a fool and I let it get the better of me. I came back for you. I came back in the hopes that there’s still a chance I can make it up to you. That I can prove to you that I’m worthy of you.” Right now? No. He wasn’t worthy of anything. He knows this. He’s not blind, anymore ( well he is partially blind but in a literal sense ); but he was willing to devote himself to her: wholly this time. To let go of his previous ambitions. To accept her as his goddess, if that’s what she desires.

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