Here you can test your HTML here to see if it works properly on the boards. Remember to close your tags and set a password so that you can edit your posts if necessary.
He toys with her mane, and the flesh at her crest twitches, sending pleasant tingles down the length of her spine from where he gently pulls on her salt-waved tresses. Çiçek wants to reciprocate, to find her way into the place at his crest where she has lost herself once before and forget her hesitation, but she knows she’ll regret it if she does without getting the answers she wants first. The mare sighs, the sound equal parts full-throated desire and steely resignation, and glances out at the water for a second, the words coming slowly out of her like sweet molasses.
But maybe, too, the stories Azaleya shared of her granddam had played a part. Briar, mare of the Inlet, had given her stallion many children before Azaleya, to a man different from her grandsire, and had spent the best years of her life eternally chasing the love and affection and commitment she so desperately wanted, only to never truly get it. It had torn her to pieces, twisted her into a shell of herself, one who hid from the world in dark caverns and saw visions of her long-dead paramour that made her scream with grief. Azaleya understood her mother’s pain as only a daughter who played witness can, and had taken great care not to repeat her mistakes. ”My Çiçek,” she had whispered, so many times, ”you must never settle for one-sided love. Find the one who gives you just as much space in your heart as you save for them.”
Her parents shared that rare kind of bond. Sahin and Azaleya had lost each other so many times, under so many varied circumstances, and yet they always ended up back together. Their love was as deep and wide and endless as the sea separating the mainland from the Isles, and Çiçek wanted that badly for herself. She felt it, that pull, here - with Faolain, and with Rivaini. But she also couldn’t deny how she gravitated to Solomon. As time went on, her draw towards him only grew stronger. It was too much for her to ignore - and truth be told, she didn’t want to ignore it. Her companionship with Faolain and Rivaini was relatively easy, uncomplicated… but he brought so many questions, questions she wasn’t sure she wanted the answer to but felt compelled to find out anyway.
Çiçek stops her slow steps, looking into his kind emerald eyes with her own.
Kahretsin.Damnit.Çiçek’s tail swishes at the frustration building within her. She is used to being open, but being open and being vulnerable are two different things. Çiçek feels like she’s laying her heart on a silver platter, presenting it to him to treasure or devour as he sees fit. Can she trust him? It’s like looking over the edge of a precipice and wondering if he’ll be there, at the bottom, ready to catch her.
The mare steels her resolve, then, and swan dives over the metaphorical edge, hurtling towards whatever fate awaits her below.
Çiçek traces the firm line of his jaw with her nose. Her bright eyes look over him, uncertain, and her heart pounds in her chest harder than it ever has before. She braces herself for his response, knowing her offer is probably not ideal for him. But if they are to work together, as similar - and different - as they are, they are going to have to learn how to compromise. Better to see if they can before a child is thrown into the mix, and her heart is broken into a million tiny pieces.