a (too) honest opinion ;; not accepting
It isn't often, Eir knows, that Aleks isn't listening to her. She may whine, yes, she may grumble and grouch and claim him to be purposely ignoring her to wind her up or simply to spite her. Yet, she knows her older brother to be too kind for that, truly. So a chance to talk about him when he can't listen? Is a rare occasion.
Under careful hands a moth, wings still folded - stiff and cold, small and delicate - is lain out on a clean white sheet, the point of a needle gleaming in stark light as if in an operating theatre. Eir snorts.
"Aleks is an ass," she dismisses. "He always has been. When I was a child, when he was young, he lived as if he would never die. Drank in honour of gods which his people believed him to be part of, partied and- no, not partied, what is the word? Revelled? Revelled as if life would always continue this way. It was suffocating, being around him; being in his shadow, being his little new conquer, his sweet plaything with such a funny bark and bite."
Slowly, gently, the wings are adjusted once more, spread and pinned into a position Eir is sure the moth would have appreciated, if it were still alive. It looks about to take flight off her table and she sighs.
"But, he loved me. Loves me, still, doesn't stop showing it, in the most frustrating ways possible, whether it be buying me new socks or letting me stay over when I am ill or pinching my knee under the table during dinnertime. And he let me grow, let me soar above whatever I was supposed to be before he found me. I love him for that."
Glancing from her work, she pushes her glasses back up her nose and rests her eyes on a small photo framed on her wall, faded and dated June 1944.
"I love him. Don't tell him I said that."