Find the Word... Love Edition!
Thank you to @mothboypoison for the tag :) In return I nominate @hrh-spinach, @ourspecial, @runicmagitek, @laboradorescence, @visualheresy, @keioschaos, @wandringaesthetic, @danceswithdarkspawn! And anyone else who wants to join in.
Words for me to find: hand, familiar, embrace, yearning, dear
Words for you to find: lips, holding, present, star, simple
The tram left them in the shadow of the command centre, under a roof patterned with leaping dolphins in the undulating hues of the sea. Last time he stood below that waveless surface Elmyra kissed his cheek and put him on the journey home, and just the touch of her hand melted the layer of rime that still clung to his skin after months making wind power in the far north. She had pictures to show him, too, of Corel in a new spring where the sun awakened the mountain fern and things were being built again – thanks in no little part to the expertise a certain master of materia shared with them the year before. He smiled as he took Marlene's hand again and led her through wide streets bereft of road markings where no cars roved, framed by cascades of flowering vines and merry market stalls. Elmyra's green fingertips had touched every part of the city, left a little Cetra magic down every dirty alley she walked at the start of it all, and some of those sparks still danced on his skin, too. The town was lit in amber the first evening, when she took his hand and marched him through the streets she helped to shape, back to her place without a second's hesitation. Not until her clothes came off and she covered her chest with her palms, like he was meant to be surprised she didn't have the body of a twenty-year-old beauty queen under there. He stepped closer and took her hands in his and she placed them on his arm, over the rough and cratered band where skin met metal.
Elena blinked. The lines between the sky and the trees were still there. Connecting lines. Not separation boundaries. One could not be without the other. “My parents used to say people who did drugs only had themselves to blame when they ended up selling their bodies in the gutter.” Her mouth moved on its own, shaping familiar sounds with no weight behind them.
Yuffie snorted. “Kinda hard when you freaks don't use money anymore. 'Sides, what a load of horseshit. Old Man Shinra did just fine, and there's no way he wasn't powdering his nose when no-one was looking. Hell, probably when they were, too. Who was gonna stop him?”
A laugh bubbled up out of Elena's nose. “I believe Sephiroth had that honour.”
Yuffie was silent, then responded with a quiet, “heh. Yeah. He did. And I'm the one who stopped Sephiroth.”
- from Into the Night Uncharted
The lights stayed with him on the long flight across the ocean. And then rose Junon, a cracked and rotten tooth jutting out of the broken ground. He would be there for the days when the seeds his friends had planted came at last to full bloom and draped the concrete bulwark all in green, when butterflies flocked about the heights and the people sang in the streets. He'd be there when the last grain of the desert beyond the mountains blew away and left only trees and flowers to tell the tale. And he'd be there, still, when the ocean returned the city's verdant embrace at last and toppled the tall tower, taking it and leaving it somewhere else as time marched on and made new.
The yowl crawled in from the empty hall, long-drawn and full of yearning.
Reeve put his equations to the side and rubbed the blur from his eyes. Rolling his neck and straightening his back yielded a chain reaction of cracks and crunches, and he groaned. “I'm right here, pretty girl.”
Another keening wail prompted a pause in the clatter behind him. “She wants attention where she is,” said the disembodied husky voice from the kitchen.
“Probably.” The rise and the run and the long strings of numbers had stopped translating into a helpful vision of ramps and pulleys about half an hour ago, anyway. Junon's first high-rise farm, the project of a lifetime and culmination of five years of the city's healing, could wait. Reeve slid from the couch onto his knees, into a patch of late afternoon dappled light. He rapped with three knuckles on the floorboard. A chirrup, a scrabble of claws, and a small clear bell sang in time with Freya's soft trot along the corridor. She stopped in the doorway, then barrelled into his open arms, ringing with every bound.
Reeve laughed as she nuzzled into his shoulder, pressed her lithe body against him until the gentle rumble of her purr reverberated in his own chest. “You're so big now,” he whispered, kissing silky fur and scratching her ears. “How'd you get so big, when I wasn't looking?”
Terra sighed as she smoothed her skirts, tugging at the darker dampened patches. “Oh, dear. It really is obvious what we've been doing, isn't it?”
“You slipped while picking the carnations and pulled me down with you. Or we had a water fight, which I would win.”
Terra laughed. “You'd like to think so, wouldn't you?” She slipped her sandals back onto her feet, but it helped little. Her hair was a knotted briar and her dress, wrinkled and wet, did nothing to disguise the prominence of her still-roused nipples.
Celes nodded, reaching down past the sodden patches daubed on her legs for her boots. “We could head for my chambers, if you wish. They're closer and more out of the way. We'll find you something more presentable to put on.” And I could have you screaming the night away with no-one the wiser. You'll see what I can do with a bed under us, she didn't say. Not with Terra still pale and shaken and blinking away tears. Celes would only clothe her, hold her, let her fall asleep on her shoulder or read to her until guilt, that most unwelcome of intruders, left the way it came in the night.
