†
She regards him suspiciously after his questions. Temblor has to look away from that gaze, wondering again at how she seems to see right through him. She starts to respond and that brings his eyes back to her, but she falters. Temblor waits. And when she speaks again, softly, as if afraid admitting her desires will render them impossible, his heart constricts with sympathy. Happiness is such a fleeting thing. Her eyes shine as she continues, and Temblor tries to give her space for her grief, flickering his own gaze away to ease the self-consciousness that seems always to accompany tears.
And when his eyes slip back to hers again, after she's dropped her head and cleared her throat, he sees them threatening to spill over. It reminds him of Anne's poise when he came upon her grieving— had that elegant mare stood thus, holding the storm of her emotions in the face of some companion, allowing not one drop of that rain to fall until she had secured for herself some privacy among the Ruins? And where will Sonorae go to feel the full weight of her own emotional tempest— deeper into Paradise, or away from Atlantis entirely?
"I very much hope so, Sonorae," he replies, heartfelt. If she didn't inspire such egregious self-loathing within himself, Temblor would be tempted to reach out and collect her to him with the strong arch of his neck, to offer the physical support of someone recognizing the depth of another's trauma (he doesn't really know, though, can only imagine the circumstances which have led to this moment in Sonorae's life, led her to being abandoned and on the verge of tears but holding it together in front of a relative stranger). He does not breach that boundary, however, and instead swings his head away to stare through the trees to the ocean and its cleansing promise.
He aches to separate himself from her and dive into those waves, to forget again everything he has left behind, to cleanse for the umpteenth time his own identity from his skin and emerge renewed, fresh, unsullied by his sins. But perhaps a baptism is no longer enough, now that he finds himself more regularly among company again. Perhaps, he reflects, tipping his ears back a notch, he should be burying the tarnished shards of his reputation under good, clean earth and cover it further with the foundation of something great and unshakeable.
Temblor searches for solutions and can find only one.
"Stay with me," he says as his eyes lock unerringly with hers, his near ear twitching attentively toward her. "And teach me what you can about this jungle of yours." And in the days to come, as his business pulls him away from Paradise, he will do what he can to gather word of Rougaru on her behalf. Temblor will not burden her with false hope, nor make any grand promises. He can offer her only his protection as band stallion to their herd.
Such a foundation, he thinks. Two horses so burdened by their own troubles it hurts to share one another's company.
In time, perhaps that will change.
Temblor hopes.
TEMBLOR
& swallows you whole
|
|