a kiss while slow dancing évariste and émilie, he's a big believer that there should always be music by the fire in a refugee camp
KISSES // accepting . @middener @fairb4nks
She was no midwife, but she had brought a small boy into the world on that day.
It was not the first baby she had delivered, would surely not be the last, but at least this one was given back to the arms of the mother - screaming into the forest that had welcomed it. The mother would have died if the Émilie and the small group of mages that she had been leading hadn't found a small group that would eventually lead them to this large camp. She hadn't. Both of them were now resting in the calmest part, wrapped in warm wools. The comings days and years would be hard, but Émilie was glad that for once the screams that rippled because of her hands were those of life instead of a life departing.
Even if she had a distinct talent for the latter. It felt better for this world that she should keep trying to do the former.
The blood from saving the woman's life was still remained beneath her nails, regardless of how hard she had cleaned it.
The warm, terrible, mulled wine in her stomach made the day easier; it had been one of celebration though only she knew how close it had come to be a tragedy.
"My mother used to tell me..." she starts talking, and the left side of her face rests against his rough coat. She had been careful to only use her left side. Her blue eyes watched the flames dance as they swayed - there was music but this was more of comfort "She used to tell me my brain was full of bees." she smiles and her eyes remain in the flames - the right side of her face, scarred from the burns that had lead to her freedom, was bathed in that same warm light, leaving only small shadows from the scar tissues - shadows dancing on her face was nothing new "A constant buzzing, and that it surely was because of all the beautiful flowers I had for a mind."
It had been before they had realised that buzzing was very much real. Before she started to pick up upon the feelings of those around her. There had never been any beautiful prairie in her mind, though she remembered how she thought it would look like, even now.
There was never silence in the camp. Even as the nights winded down there was always some whispering, some plucked distant tune, some mild complaining. Émilie hardly managed to sleep the first few days. She knew more than she would like about too many people in this camp, despite not knowing their faces. Their names. The music helped, but sleep was still elusive beyond the lightest of veils that was disrupted by the earliest of mornings.
There were always bandages that needed washing.
"I think I understand why you always have music." she hums, turning her head so that her chin now rests against his chest. The words come naturally, easily and she doesn't stop them "Silence is a cruel trickster. I find myself wishing for it... But when the only company is myself and the silence acts like a still river with no one else but my reflection to look back upon?..."
They keep swaying and it feels natural, easy. With the mulled wine in her stomach. Her chin length silver hair toned into a closer natural shade that it had once had by the fire. He stops swaying and so she stops too, her eyes find his easily - dark blue meet eyes that reflect only the flames and his own back: recognition, briefly, maybe.
Silence was such a dangerous thing in a place so full of life.
I am a better person when I am surrounded by those that are better than me.
His lips fall ever so easily onto hers and hers into his and she feels herself swaying again. The crackling of the fire. The music. The voices. The bees. It is all but wise noise that diminishes softly. She holds his back with her hands, holding him in place until he releases her, taking that moment too with the spent breath and red cheeks - from the kiss and from the warmth of the fire on her face and the fire that had been roaring for years in her mind. She could sink into him and find comfort - she knows that is the shape he has for these people. That of hope.
She still dreams of the prairie that a burnt forest could one day become.
"It is a hard life, Évariste." and on her tongue, in her accent, she hears not only her voice but the accent of those whose silence was all they could do. Their blood she didn't have beneath her nails. But she carried the smallest proof of their existence on the grooves of her tongue. She knew that he would know it. That every single person in this camp would know what it was to speak with pieces from those they have lost along the way as the only means to carrying their memory.
She stops swaying, taking a step back, holding his hand with her right one, keeping her pinky and ring finger - the scarred fingers - out of the touch. She smiles, though, and that warmth reaches her light eyes easily "But the life you are providing these people is a good one."