Oathsworn to Ylva
She is bemused, but he had anticipated by her response that she might be in some form. But the level of her lack of hearing, the level of her bewilderment seems to be far deeper, far more bone-deep than he could have guessed at. Her tears distress him, but her explosive evasion of his touch, that he is stunned by all the more than she had been at his existence.
It is a wound deeper than any of the scars had been when freshly made. She stumbles but her refusal of him in such a visceral form gives his pause. He is not free of his help because she is muttering words of refusal and he had sworn that at her command, he would leave her sight and no longer be there to accompany her.
She did not know, of course, that it would never take him from her guardianship. He would simply be relegated into the wild, hovering like a satellite moon, barely feeling the love of his planet’s gravity. He hears that she can’t - and against every fiber of his soul, he obeys.
He obeys-- but not in silence.
"Do not send me away, now, Ylva…" He has never demanded or commanded and hardly ever asked for himself anything of her-- yet here he does. "My Lady, I have lived in nightmares and depraved of any kind of warmth or affection - at least do not send me away. At least let me be a quiet shadow, if that is all you can bear of me."
He immediately eschews the joy of having found her, the love of his whole world, accepting the distance that she had one-time granted him begrudgingly for the sake of her son and then perhaps for the sake of convenience. His near-black eyes lose some of the delirious shine, his ears swung to either side in his place of uncertainty, his heart screaming at him to do more, be more, to become something more than the shade of a man he had been the many years apart from her.
He takes a step closer, unable to bridle that compulsion to embrace her entirely, but it is a stifled and jilted movement. "I do not know your woes, but I would carry them as I once did… if you could tolerate me for a moment more, two moments, three..." He reaches out with his muzzle, aching to remember the warmth against his barrel and her look of familiarity on her face when seeing him. "Please, you know I will go if you turn me away, I could never deny you, but if you can bear it, let me hold on to the last thing left I can love in peace."
OF THE LOST ISLANDS’ WILDS
▻ sixteen years - friesian - heterozygous black - 16.1 hh ◅