†
Paradise feels almost peaceful at night. Though the air is still cut with cries, the tones are different, the frequency of each call varied as the birds sink into sleep and the nocturnal tree-dwellers clamber out of their nests for the night's feeding. Temblor stands idly near the grove where jasmine grows thickest. The dense jungle hides the ocean from him, masking the smell and sound of it and denying him any wink of it through the trees, but tonight that is for the best. He has been pensive, of late, and takes solace this evening from the scent wafting from the white blooms.
He is conflicted.
These last two years he has successfully built a fortress around himself. Now he stands at the gate between the rest of the world and his inner courtyard, key fitted to the lock and prepared to tumble it free and release him from this prison of his own making—or invite others into his sacred retreat. Part of him, he supposes, feels he does not deserve, is not worthy. That voice has been locked away deep in the cellar somewhere, forgotten behind wine casks and a lost doll, left with the apples rotting in the dark. Into that same cellar he has shoved the memory of his sunplaced, actually,
with careful hands and left it there to shine, unseen, to burn the retinas of no one save the rats for he is certainly through with it, and with her, and with the sticky self-loathing he has tried to shake from himself with every step and every stroke as he ran and swam his way to redemption, here, on these islands in the midst of nothing but salt, lost; found.
Temblor draws in a deep, steadying breath and sighs it out, soothed.
His name rolls through the gathering dark. He opens his eyes to fog, skews one ear toward the mare who emerges from the opaque curtain, blinks as light threatens to burst from behind his thickly mortared walls. He turns, slowly, a bit bemused— "Sonorae," he rumbles, feeling himself growing steadily more tethered. Subconsciously, his eyes skate past hers, and with effort he brings them back to look at her, to see her without the cloud of his own judgment obscuring his vision.
They have spent more time apart than together. Perhaps he should be irritated by this, but Temblor feels only relief mingled with gratitude. Autumn was more trying for him this year than he thought it would be; he is glad there was not even a moment of temptation, instinct driven though it may have been, for either of them to flounder awkwardly past. And, he has kept himself busy. In truth, he may have made himself more difficult for the gray mare to find than he intended. Consciously, at least.
"I am well," he replies courteously. This time his eyes leave hers to check her quickly for sign of external injury, but the only marks he spots on her coat are the red swaths that patch her freckled coat. "Join me," he invites her, stepping back and turning to make room for her within the grove. The jasmine blooms are barely visible, small and pale and cloaked by the fog and dark, but their pleasant scent pervades the area. "And tell me how you've fared while I've been away from home."
TEMBLOR
& swallows you whole
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