#astralsung

[azurlia]

        ❝ actually, i grew up around pegasi. ❞ a gloved palm runs over the expanse of the winged mount’s back, nostalgia filling dark irises.  ‘ i know how to fly, but i’m not nearly as good as my brother or mother... what about you, marianne ? ever wonder what it’s like up there ? ’ // @astralsung​

[norabuta]

@astralsung​ said: ❝ she’s not coming home. ❞ / from kanao! :> || x . x

          it’d been days now, and inosuke hadn’t moved from the steps leading up to the estate. not to eat, not to sleep, no movement aside from shifting in place or going up to the gate and looking out. expecting. this could be seen as refusal to do their work, having made a full recovery and ready to go, but they stayed, still waiting.

    a part of them knew why she hadn’t come back. there was something nagging at their heart that made each passing hour only ache more. but they were determined. what if she came back right after they left?

        a week now, and inosuke let themself rest on the steps, but only for an hour before they were upright again, watching the gate as if their life depended on it. they could feel someone else behind them, someone probably having gotten in when they were resting; it wasn’t hisa-san, so they didn’t care. not until she spoke.

        she knew why they were waiting here? what was keeping them ground in place, in denial to the truth that was only being proven by the somber looks of those leaving the wisteria estate. they refused to believe it, not until they had proof.. but such straight forward words. it’s not like the other’s, trying to put it so delicately that it goes in one ear and out the other.

             “she’s... she’s not...”

          these words are echoed, inosuke’s voice raspy from the lack of food and water each passing day. hisa-san.... calloused and scarred hands curl into the hide of their pants, pulling at the rough fabric and pinching the skin that lie underneath, their expression unchanging as drip by drip tears begin spilling along their cheeks. hisa-san. 

        inosuke never truly understood what their connection to other humans was, they could never pinpoint what relationship really felt like family, and they never thought they would. but, sitting upon the steps of an empty wisteria estate, having waited longingly for someone to return, someone that inosuke could only think of as their mother... 

                       “she’s-- she’s not coming back.”

        it seems they know now.               and it hurts.

[bonehymn]

her words stop dead when aerith starts speaking back. yelling is more like it, and elizabeth jolts, minutely, every part of her going ramrod straight, a spring wire trap coiling for the collision, the eventual break. her expressions morph from shock, to agony, to embarrassment and back again to agony where it hangs like an open tear, lips pursed so tight her mouth seems removed from her face.

she didn’t want any of this. aerith getting upset, aerith raising her voice at her.

aerith losing her trust in her.

i may have just ruined us, elizabeth laments, feeling heat sting at the back of her eyes, staring at aerith’s approach, the hand she lifts between them. their relationship is a baby bird’s heart, still so new and warm and small and elizabeth injected poison into it, just like that. her hands are trembling and she can’t stop, she can’t stop.

aerith is the one good thing that has happened to her in a long, long time and elizabeth is destroying that because she doesn’t know how to be good back. because how could aerith truly want someone who wasn’t good, how could she want a woman made up more of what she isn’t than by what she is. where’s the worth in that ?   in elizabeth ?

“  aerith, i  …  ”   she sounds choked up but not close to tears, even though she is. elizabeth can’t decide between looking at aerith’s hands or her face.

what she wants right now are many things, but most of all to pull aerith into her arms and bury herself in her skin, as if she could be transformed and bettered, just like that. she should pull back, let aerith go. she should, but girls can be selfish, desperate for anything that’s soft, anything that will love them back.

elizabeth isn’t better. she knows this.

she inhales audibly and it is wet, strangled, teetering on the brink of collapse. her head hangs low, forehead near to touching aerith’s chest. she hasn’t stopped trembling.

“  i don’t want to lie to you, i don’t, i don’t. i just  ...  i don’t know, aerith. i’m not a savior. i’m no hero, nothing that anyone’s going to look towards for some idea of nobility. i know that. but that doesn’t  – ,  ”     oh, maybe she will cry after all. elizabeth sniffs, determined to hold her tears back until the very end.    “  it doesn’t make this any e-easier.  ”

         /  @astralsung​

[bonehymn]

“  i  have  something  for you.  ”     without any fanfare, they hold up a fish for marianne, tail up -- of a modest size, still wet from the water and very much alive, squirming upside down in byleth’s grip.

                    /   @astralsung​ 

[thornvows]

“   and  ...  THERE !   ” 

with the sort of dramatic flourish only someone who works at the theater can have, dorothea presents the lonely, beautiful beast with a small, slightly misshapen crown of flowers. give her credit where due, she had to wrestle gladioluses into that. 

the crown is wider than the span of her wrist and fits snugly around a single horn. she takes a step back to admire her creation.

“   if only you could see what i see. who could ever call you SCARY, beast  ?   ”

              ++ @astralsung​

[thornvows]

“  come now ,  ”      she can feel how meager her smile is, killing it outright before it even has a chance to bloom fully.  her breath trembles on each word.     “  haven’t you done enough for one night ?    or a thousand ?   you can rest some hours, can’t you  ?  ”      

               ++ @astralsung​