you claim to carry it to defend yourself, but i think you do it because you like it. i think you do it because it makes you feel powerful. well, you are not powerful. not powerful enough. + to gale. :)
𝐇𝐄 𝐇𝐀𝐒 𝐋𝐎𝐍𝐆 𝐁𝐄𝐄𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐒: a boy gulping a man's grief, drinking it in a cup overflowing with wine, like blood, like ithbank. icarus too close to the sun, anger flaring like the snapped open wings of a bird, BUT SHE'S NOT THE BIRD OF PREY HERE THIS TIME. she's not the shrike clawing at the snake wrapped around her. anger is skimming the surface of him, fins cutting through the water hiding the frenzy beneath, when the white of the seafoam comes from the frothing anger in him, waves hiding his temperament.
she doesn't mind it, he knows, the inkling of rage alighting along him, doesn't mind it at all, wanting to run nails over skin, how she'd split it tenderly, to see what monsters would come pouring out if given the chance. just so she could play with the worst edges, turning him around in her hands, end over end, playing over sharp lines. just so she can break those too, to show, ragged with hunger, that his worst is nothing. that he must adapt to the life she is cultivating here, in the dark, menzoberranzan has no place for softness.
gale wants to distort the image of her, to get into the lockbox of her feelings and press fingerprints into every tender bit, the soft of her caring, just to see if he can rip away the callouses and force her to feel the pressure. force her to be as soft as he is.
most people go through their whole lives and never feel this close to someone, the beat of their hearts, the warmth of skin, MORE INTIMATE THAN A TENDER EMBRACE, when she can feel the fear beating through him, wrestling the control from his fingertips, nevermind that he’s barely holding on, nevermind that he’s slipping slowly. the intimacy of sharing this fear, a murder done tenderly, not to her, but with her, a victim who refuses to be one, and a murderer who refuses to let go of her murdered. his fingers threaded into her hair, woven in like red into a tapestry, violence tightly leashed.
but, he thinks, done up in gold, or the juice of peach flesh crushed in her hands, it doesn’t matter, he thinks, if he’s to die, he’d probably prefer it to be on romantic terms, at the beachside and watching the tsunami coming to swallow the shore. drowning and considering the color of the waves. he thinks, that she like him, would like his death warrant signed with her teeth.
"and what else am i to do, minthara? roll over and die? wizards are soft, as you so pointedly remind me, lest either of us gain any illusions to the contrary. I, am soft. What would you have me do?"
@n1ghtwarden UNPROMPTED ASKS FROM CLAIRE : always accepting !
