"What do you need?" ( ♥ hybridiism. )
MEME | accepting
“From you?” When David reached for her hand, he was grateful to find Eve had lingered near enough to touch. Sometimes he ached just looking at her. Some nights like this one, he ached even when he should not have; the evening’s gala failed to procure for him any entertainment worth mentioning. The opportunity to drink, to let his head grow thick with fog and quips for his peers, proved difficult for an Elder. The truth of the matter was he had no peers in this place: certainly none so long-lasting or sincere as her.
He would’ve liked to say that the benevolent leader he aimed to be demanded nothing from his people and targeted no one person to repeat the same, specific tasks. ‘Only human’ was a phrase that didn’t quite cut it by the technicality, but David’s pride never reached lengths high enough to make his father proud—admitting personal flaws came without struggle, without hesitation.
Was it a flaw, exactly, that he most often preferred Eve’s counsel to that of his Elder’s official circle? Who could fault him for confiding in someone who cared to listen, rather than in a team of elected bodies that’d always put the species first? Some would say perhaps and others, definitely so—if not for traditionalist attitudes then certainly for hard-lost prejudices against the girl, herself.
Such archaic pigheadedness would require weeding out. Sooner, rather than later. The smile he offered her was soft from an evening’s disuse, from a decade of banter and dances and quiet hours shared in her company alone. “How generous are you feeling?”
