The only time I’m not worried about something is when I’m with you.
Such a sweet sentence both warmed and further harmed her at the same time. Charmeine smiled, though her blue eyes remained sad, and briefly glanced away from him and toward the tumbling creek at their hooves. It used to be the same for her, she was sure of it, but lately there were too many jumbled, confusing feelings that she did not want to feel and they always became more intense when she was alone with Kho. None of this would be confessed, though, because Charmeine did not want him to think of his presence as a burden to her. If she could only shut her mind off and just exist rather than panicking about the great big unknown looming in front of her, maybe she wouldn’t mentally run herself in circles all throughout the night.
Kho reached out to tussle her cream forelock, his breath a significantly warmer temperature than the air, feeling as though it inspired shivers that started at the contact. The white-freckled skin over her shoulder, hardly noticeable unless her coat was fully shed and one was close enough to decipher white from soft cream, twitched as though she was disturbing a fly, though there were no insects buzzing about. A giggle did escape her though as he ruffled at her hair again, whatever brief, suspended moment they’d been caught in seemingly dispelled.
The laughter had helped her heart feel somewhat lighter, even if the woes and the stress still remained. We can be cowards together. Charmeine lifted her gaze to watch him, then sighed. “I think I could be anything as long as it was alongside you.” She confessed, her voice quiet. That still-sad feeling lurked somewhere underneath those words, some impending doom rising, convincing her that her days with Kho were numbered, and those numbers were sharply decreasing.
“But I don’t think you’re a coward at all, Kho,” not in the way she was, anyways. “You’ve actually traveled away from the Bay and off Tinuvel.” Charmeine pointed out, glancing into the dark shadows of the woods at their back, where the beach was just a hike down the way. “I’ve never swam in the ocean before, but the way my mom is afraid of it…” Charmeine trailed off. The way it had supposedly claimed the life of the stallion who sired her, who her mother spoke of so fondly it had made Charmeine ache to have been able to meet him, even just once. “I don’t think I ever will until I absolutely have to.” Until she was forced to finally go and make a life somewhere, whenever that may be.
The closest she’d gone to the ocean was the day they’d taken the ever-bold and boisterous Parisa, guided by Fell. Even then, Charmeine had lingered on the sand, only so much as letting her hooves touch the very edges of the waves before she ran back away from it. At the time it had seemed like a game, but in truth, the dark, churning waters had frightened her and Charmeine had not wanted to go too deep into it.
She huffed a breath, tired of worrying for the night, of spooking herself by thinking of all the things she was afraid of, and decided with only the moon watching them, she would allow herself to be selfish. “Would you stay here and sleep with me until the sun rises?” Charmeine tilted her head, watching him. She did not mean to look at him so vulnerably, so needy, but there was something radiating from her then, something begging for comfort she was growing too weak to keep fighting.
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