Hushed Willows driftwood: a fairytale

February Theme: Love
@Delight, but no rush! just wanted to get this posted

It had not been so long since Seabreeze has roused from her unconsciousness. It had not been so long since that day that Lily told her of the sea woman’s accident, hurried and out of breath. It had not been so long since her heart raced and mind went sour, looking upon the women who had her entire soul lie crumpled in a heap at the foot of the cliffs — if only Olive had been there, if only she could have warned her wife of the danger allure of the cliffs, perhaps Seabreeze could have been spared such pain. If only…

Alas, the Shakti woman had not been present for that moment, and she was mature enough now to understand that was just the way of things. Olive could no more change destiny than she could the stars in the sky, or the winds that blew; she was subject to the will of the gods as was everything that had ever lived or breathed. Seabreeze had been meant to suffer because from suffering came growth and abundance — Olive had been meant to suffer too, for the very same reasons. These weren’t always happy lessons, and often times felt as though her very essence and being were being torn into two, but Olive thanked the celestial gods for their blessings all the same. It was not their fault that she was merely mortal, and that sometimes even she could not scry their divine words from the pain which they wrought. Sometimes, it didn’t seem fair, but Olive knew that was the small way of looking at things. 

Olive was not a totally skilled nurse. Once, in a past life, she had cut her teeth using Dakarai as her patient — but it was a mode of necessity, a part of her life that she did not wish to revisit. The blood and the emotional anguish that came with nursing was not appealing to the shrouded empath, and when she was around those experiencing physical pain Olive found that she felt it, too. Perhaps such intuitive powers might have been a useful skills for a clinician, but Olive had no desire for it... all the same, she worked to heal Seabreeze with whatever knowledge remained inside her. In the end, perhaps it was not Olive’s nursing skills that had seen Seabreeze through the worst of it. It had been more of an energy thing. 

With Seabreeze having returned to her mostly normal self, Olive felt a little more secure. She returned to her duties of interacting with the pack and mothering Eleuthera, Séamus, Okeanos and the newly-returned Ibis. Delight’s children might always be lost to her, but to Olive, it was not for lack of trying. This, like many other things that threatened to throw Olive off-kilter, she chose not to let bother her.

At the moment, Olive was neither with her convalescent wife nor with her litter of grown children. She was out, looking at a small clearing — a great location for the garden she had never started. Then, she had climbed to the summit of the great rocks [artfully avoiding the place she knew Seabreeze to have fallen from] and gazed upon the sky — full of invisible stars which she had neglected to speak to. Life had just moved so fast since the ordeal of leaving Sunspire and then moving the Sanctuary; had she truly let these parts of her, which were so essential to her very being, fall to the wayside? Either way, the ground now was frozen solid, and they sky full of heavy gray clouds, so these things must wait until spring. For now, Olive was fine to weave through the draping branches of the willows, a white snowfall all its own, and be thankful that all these different lessons happened in a place so beautiful; a place more holy than she could ever hope to be.

helping tend to seabreeze is something of an anchor to delight, who largely splits his time between his fallen friend and his daughter. mali is... mali is a spot of guilt for him right now, a fragment he knows he should try to fix before it's too late, but the mean voice in his head tells him it's too late already, so why bother?

he was never very good at being a father.

seabreeze's health returns and (selfishly) delight begins to feel unmoored once more, despite his genuine relief at her recovery. it has, if nothing else, brought him even closer to her, having put to words some of the heavy feelings he's been carrying. he loves her, he thinks, but what does that mean for -- her wife? sweet olive, who delight is learning to rely on a little more, these days, but he's always been slow to open up.

and so when he spots her he impulsively decides to seek her company, cautiously climbing to meet her where she gazes at the sky. "olive," delight calls softly, perhaps overly aware of the dangers of the cliffs as she surely is, "mind if i join you?"

Olive hadn’t expected to see anyone that afternoon, but when she felt the presence of another enter the vicinity around her, she was happy to find that it was Delight. Not that the druid didn’t want to interact with the seraphim, but Delight was becoming quite near and dear to her and any time spent with the shakti was time well spent. 

— she also keenly remembered what she and Seabreeze had recently discussed, and was excited to make further inroads with the potential father of their children. She did not expect Delight to say no to their proposition, considering his already-close relationship with Seabreeze, but if she had been critical woman she might have wondered about his litter of misfit children with Queenie. Regarding that, and regarding all other things, Olive had been feeling quite positive and she decided to lean fully into it. After all, everything was so truly splendid and to deny that would be to almost laugh in the gods’ faces. 

Her lips almost immediately split into a simpering smile and she welcomed the other wolf into her space.  “Delight! What a de—” Delight is almost what she had said, but she cut herself off with a halt and then acknowledged her mistake with bashful giggle. After a beat, she recovered by saying  “I would love nothing more,” and managed to bat her eyelashes in what hopefully came off as welcoming and endearing. She unfurled herself for a hug, if he wanted it. “How have you been?”

she greets him warmly; contented, delight moves in closer to her, stifling a laugh at the aborted pun. it's not the first time he's heard it, but rarely has it been used genuinely for him. 

"i'm managing," he says honestly, remembering their pledge to check in with each other. "trying to figure out what to do with myself these days, i guess. how are you?" despite everything he is not oblivious to the call of breeding season upon them. the idea of being seabreeze and olive's donor has flickered in the back of his mind, though he has not given it serious thought -- why get worked up over something they might not even ask of him, honestly? it's not that... well. if he was going to have children with anyone, it should have been seabreeze, but what a miserable failure of a parent he is! no, it's doubtful that they'd even think of him if they wanted to have a litter this year. 

being the nosy bitch that he is though, he tilts his head and says, "breeding season is an interesting time of year, yeah?"

Delight accepted her embrace and she lingered in their closeness, feeling [quite clearly] how her heart swelled within her chest while they are in such a close proximity. There is much to Delight that she does not understand — though the druid liked to believe that she could read others much as she read the sky — but everything she learned, she loved. Even the things he saw as darkness, Olive could only see as light. The universe needed his energy, authentic and unchanged, the same way it needed everyone else’s. 

Olive huffed a little, as if the burden they bore was simply too much. She felt the same way, restless and itchy and a little unsure what to do with oneself, the reason why was no secret. “I am much of the same,” she acquiesced, and when Delight moved right onto the topic of breeding season, Olive knew they were on the same page. Emboldened by this, she flashed him a sheepish smile. 

“It is the most interesting,” she agreed with him wholeheartedly. Olive was never one to beat around the bush — she liked to believe that when it came to the important matters in life, she faced them head-on — so when she saw her opportunity, she took it. Very rarely would the question that lay on the tip of her tongue be prefaced so nicely, and nearly invited by the other party. Olive pressed her forelegs firmly into the earth, enjoying the flutter in her heart and anticipation on her mind. “— and it might become more interesting yet…” The sylph looked away, taking a fluttering breath. “Seabreeze and I wanted to ask you something.” Her gaze, forest-green and pleading for understanding, held his firmly.  “Seabreeze loves you; I know this much to be true. I am also very fond of you — you… you are one of the good ones.” Whether he’d like to admit it about himself, this was how the two wives saw Delight.  

“We want to have children this year, but they need a father. When the time comes, would… you?”

Olive fell silent, heart beating wildly and stomach doing backflips and blood racing as if it were the Indy 500. There was a look upon her face that relished these moments, the moments when life was being lived to its fullest, and world’s energy rushed around her. She thought of the children they might have, and the temperaments they might possess, and knew no one else could suit this purpose better. “We would trust no other with such a task,” she added, backing up a pace or two in order to give Delight room to process.

well, there goes that assumption. delight cannot help the way his eyes grow large and round, saucer-like, as olive speaks; his heart flutters. you are one of the good ones. surely he's not, but he can believe it, for a second, when olive says it -- it is hard not to get pulled into her confidence. 

he opens his mouth to say yes, of course, pulled along into the fantasy. but he cannot in good conscience accept outright. delight pulls back, his brow furrowing gently. "i want to say i'd do anything for you and seabreeze," he murmurs, melancholy, "but -- olive, i am a terrible father. how could you trust me at all?" one daughter long since gone, one reclusive and physically weak, and his son, who was such a happy boy and who is such a upsetting adult, who delight failed the most -- even if mali ever deigned to forgive him, he'd never forgive himself; hell, he can't even bring himself to talk to the boy these days.

"i love you," he says, his mouth tightening into a fragile line, "i couldn't do that to either of you."

There was a small part of Olive that expected Delight to immediately accept, and they all lived happily every after would play across the screen of their lives with a flourish of sparkles and impeccable cursive penmanship. Reality never played out like that, and though Olive had learned this lesson time and time again, she was always somewhat surprised when there was resistance to her dreams. Delight expressed his concerns and the dove’s heart did not settle, and the rush of her blood did not still, and her eyes did not stop searching his for the dark parts of himself that he was so sure existed. Still, she could not recognize anything dark or bad or terrible — in this moment, she only saw his humility and kindness. He did not want to hurt others, and this was the exact reason he would make a good father.

Still, the dove was not immune to the struggles Delight had experienced with his last litter. She had felt their frustrations herself, been witness to it all, and had probably even been the cause of some of it [hadn’t it been her and seabreeze’s idea to move the sanctuary from the boulder, after all?] but it was truly no different than Seabreeze’s weird family dynamic with she and Terance, or her own fucked-up-ness with Dakarai’s and their brood. The realization brought a smile to her face, though Delight’s concerns warranted seriousness. “We are all terrible,” the woman said with a lilt and a confident cant of her crown. “My children are scattered to the winds — i’m pretty sure that my entire first litter became trained assassins. I know that two of them are, at least.” but it did not mean that she and Dakarai were to blame for that, or that she loved them any less. These things, she had come to realize, were out of her control.

The smile then slipped from her features, hoping to convey to Delight the seriousness with which she regarded this. It had been the topic of choice on many sleepless nights, when she cried to the heavens and asked them why. The woman had belabored this topic in every which way, almost killed herself over it, experienced more pain than she thought possible because of it — but now, Olive could look back and see that had been her crucifixion, and now she was reborn. “We might still be terrible parents every day of our lives, but it should not stop us from trying — because… at the end of it all, we are not truly in control. We can only do as the gods bid, even if we do not know why.” The sylph leaned in close.  "Even if it does not make sense.”

The shakti woman did not want to continue talking about herself, but she wanted Delight to know that he was not alone in his despair — nor would he be alone when he chose to see the light. There was hope, there always was hope, but it was just harder for some people to see. “Ellie, Séamus, Ibis and Okeanos are better. It’s because of Seabreeze… She—” Olive’s sing-song voice trailed off as she thought of the right words. “She is magic.” Seabreeze was their hope — and as Delight uttered the word I love you, she realized that Delight was her hope, too. She leaned in close, and tucked her nose against his cheek for a quiet moment — a short reprieve, just for them.

When it felt right, Olive broke their embrace and walked a pace or two away from him, looking up at the willows, down to the earth, and then back over she shoulder at the dark man. “Three parents might even be better than two. And with our good hearts, we cannot lose. I mean, look at what we have here…” Olive could almost see through the thickness of the forest to the rose garden that ever-bloomed, and the river which provided them with endless food, and the holy trees which communed with the vibrations of the earth and made it accessible to the masses. There was no place better to raise a family, and it was all right here, nestled in the heart of a very powerful land.

“We have the whole of Elysium to support us. We have many friends in the lands that surround us. Our lands are safe, food is plentiful — the time has never been more right for us to try again; to be better.” She turned to face him. "All of us. Each of us. We can be better… Together.”

her voice is like honey, soothing, more kind than he ever knows to expect or how to deal with. he'd expected the rebuttal, had braced for a no, you're not, with his list of sins neatly sorted and catalogued from "burke, death of" to "solomon, disappearance of", but of course, as always, olive manages to catch him off guard. as she gets to trained assassins, he bursts into a startled cough. how on earth does that happen? he tries to imagine solomon off somewhere, training in the dark arts, and oddly, the idea brings a little warmth back into his chest.

he does not quite buy into this 'try again' idea; seabreeze, though. seabreeze is magic, it is true. if only he'd been able to better help his children with the transition in the start, maybe she could have helped them, too. slowly his doubts begin to ease, for now. elysium is not tindome nor bracken -- delight is not desperately trying to hold together the pieces of his past that he fucked up so terribly. this is not an impulse decision, it is careful planning. and he looks at olive and thinks of her and seabreeze and he does -- he does want this.

turning his head, shy, delight warbles, "it's alright that i'm not..." good, maybe, or worthy, but what comes out instead is, "a man?" he's whispered these feelings to seabreeze before -- gender is a strange thing, you know -- but hasn't spoken to anyone else about it, how to frame what he wants. "i mean it when i say i'm a terrible father -- if -- if i try again, i want it to be..." what he truly wants -- motherhood -- he can't have, not in this body, in these circumstances. but maybe olive and seabreeze can understand and the -- the paradigm can be different, if nothing else. a little desperately he holds olive's gaze, willing her to understand as best she can, for the words that describe what he really wants are impossible to him right now.

Delight’s response to her many assurances did everything short of breaking her heart. Gender definitely was a tricky thing, and it made her a little melancholy to watch Delight struggle to define it. It was not something that Olive thought about often because it was not really her business — plus, whether he identified as a man or a woman or something in-between really didn’t change anything, not to her or Seabreeze. Delight was delight was delight, and the wolf was in a class all Delight’s own. Olive wondered how many times Delight had to have this conversation, and wondered why it elicited pain. Didn’t such honesty come from bravery and a desire for the truth? 

Olive pondered what the truth was for a second, before realizing that the truth was so relative, that it was futile. She tasted the words in her mouth before she spoke them; turned them over and over again to ensure they conveyed the meaning that she intended. It was a delicate topic at hand, and she did not want Delight to feel that he was anything but loved. She returned the intensity of his gaze, answering his request for understanding with ever fibre of her being. “I would be an awful father too. Not everyone is made for such a task.” It was true — in hunting and defending and other traditionally masculine endeavors, the druid was utterly useless. If those were the expectations that their society had imposed upon her, then she would have considered herself a failure, too. 

“Maybe you would find more satisfaction from being a mother,” she suggested simply, with a rise and fall of her shoulder that said it doesn’t have to be a big deal. After all, it had been decided that Olive would carry their children for she and Seabreeze for very similar reasons. “I don’t see why not. Seabreeze cannot carry a litter either, and it makes her no less a mother.” Olive explained, but quickly realized that Delight likely didn’t need to explanation — Delight already knew that it was not biology that decided how one should parent. It might dictate who was the biological sire and dam, but that was where it ended. After that, it was up to them to decide. 

Olive let her jade gaze fall to the ground, blinking her eyelashes as she wondered to how explain her next offer. “If you wanted…you could try it out by first being our wife.” To Olive and Seabreeze, this was a big part of it all. They didn’t want just his genes, but his entire being, his energy, at all times. They wanted Delight to see the children when they were born and to raise them up to be noble and peaceful. They wanted to dedicate themselves to Delight just as they had dedicated themselves to each other; because something that created more love in the world, pure love, was never a bad thing. Even still, Olive knew it was not so simple, so she lingered on the idea for a moment before rushing to recover. “We could even find a new word for it — Oh, I would like that very much." She took a breath. "I want us all to be happy; to be the way we meant to be, surrounded by love that is unconditional.”

The druid drifted closer, pressing her forehead against Delight’s and closing her eyes. There was almost an electric vibration that sparked between the two, and she pressed her third eye to his. “That is the magic of Elysium, Delight. We already love you, as terrible as you are, and we will love you still, for as long as you would have us.” Olive shifted the position of her maw so that her lips pressed against Delight’s cheek, then his mouth. Then, she left herself there, vulnerable and asking to be kissed.