Oathsworn to Ylva
She is alive and real beneath that momentary touch - he knows she is real but even still his mind can barely fathom such a thing. He trembles with the contention of his heart and mind, one screaming to touch her again, one screaming she certainly thought he’d abandoned her and he dare not. It was enough to make his stomach churn, but he cannot take his eyes off her gaping expression and flattened ears.
She steps back into the water by a step and he jolts, suddenly stopping himself from pursuing her. Her stumble makes him do so again, stumbling as he stops himself a second time from matching the distance backwards with his own movement forwards. The cold water does seem to wake her, though, because without hesitation she calls to him, ‘My knight,’ and he can no longer hold back.
He splashes into the chilled water and aligns his side along hers. "Do not linger too long --" he says it knowing he hardly has the right to tell her what to do - but also hoping that she might still listen. "let me help?" He couldn’t, of course, say that his leaning her into his side was entirely unselfish when he so badly wished to feel the reality of her against him… but it was only because there was a righteous excuse that he dares presume to aid her at all.
"They took me… they wanted to call you to me and use you to bring me back to the war." He says it under his breath in a rumble, ashamed that he had been gone for any length of time. "But I failed you. I promised to stay until you sent me away-- but I couldn’t let you be stolen away to my homeland. It is not a good place any longer."
OF THE LOST ISLANDS’ WILDS
▻ sixteen years - friesian - heterozygous black - 16.1 hh ◅