I keep coming back to this fanart because somehow it feels like the exact moment after love has already rooted itself too deeply to be undone.
Not the beginning. Not longing.
Not even the terrifying uncertainty of what if.
Something infinitely more dangerous.
The place where devotion has become instinct.
Because looking at them here, I cannot stop thinking about the version of Elriel I hope exists beneath all the unfinished things in canon. The possibility that Azriel’s love might not reveal itself through grand declarations first, but through the unbearable accumulation of small intentional things.
The way another person’s comfort slowly becomes architecture inside him.
I think about Chapters 15 and 16 of Where Soft Things Bloom and realize neither chapter was ever truly about romance in the obvious sense. I noticed that as I was writing them.
Chapter 15 was about witnessing what safety does to someone.
What it means when a male made of shadows and survival finally sleeps deeply because beside one specific female his body has decided there is nothing worth guarding against anymore.
And I think that changes a person.
I think being loved gently changes a person.
Because Azriel has spent centuries surviving.
Expecting happiness to belong somewhere beyond himself.
So perhaps loving him looks different.
Perhaps his love appears first as instinctive things:
Remembering she dislikes cold and building warmth into every room.
Imagining gardens because her hands belong near growing things.
Creating spaces where blades exist beside flowers because he understands softness without protection has never truly been safety.
Planning. Preparing. Building.
Not because he assumes she will choose him.
But because somewhere along the way imagining her becomes impossible to separate from imagining future.
The idea that before asking for forever, he has already begun creating places where forever could survive.
I think that is why Chapter 16 hurts.
Because Elain walks through rooms filled with sunlight and quiet beauty believing she is observing architecture, while slowly realizing every detail is confession.
The gardens. The library.
The warmth. The protections.
The way nothing feels designed merely to impress.
Only to hold. Only to keep.
And perhaps most devastating of all—
the realization that someone has spent so much time imagining your happiness that pieces of you exist everywhere before you even arrive.
I think people misunderstand Elain too.
Because beneath all her gentleness I imagine there must be longing.
Without being passed between expectations or duty or what others decided she should want or be.
Chosen so thoroughly another person builds futures around her before daring to ask if she wants them too.
This fanart feels like the moment after.
After the yes. After the fear.
After two people stop wondering whether they deserve softness and begin accepting it.
His wings open around her without thought.
Her hands touch him without hesitation.
Not because either stopped carrying shadows.
But because love has become the place where shadows finally rest.
Maybe that is what I hope most for them.
A male who spent centuries surviving discovering he is loved enough to imagine permanence.
And a female who spent years feeling unseen realizing someone built an entire future and placed her carefully at the center of it.
If you want to read the chapters feel free to do so here:
https://archiveofourown.org/works/83391311/chapters/222800421
Chapter 16: A Promise Built in Bloom 🩷💙
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
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