Send “5 Times the Love” and I will write a drabble about the five times my muse fell in love with your muse
I.
Her hands piled flowers into his own, little palms and little fingers covered in little, pink petals. He watched her with wide, innocent eyes. The youngest princess in the forest was always smiling, and she talked to him in ancient (which he was still learning and could only understand every other word). But her hair looked like gold spun into silk, and her eyes were so pretty and green.
Naesala smiled back as she began to arrange the little flowers in his messy hair and the grey fledgling wings on his back. His sun-darkened cheeks turned ruddy. “What’s this for? Is it ‘cause I’m a guest?” he asked with a small giggle. His aunt had told him that he was to always be grateful for the things other people gave him when he was a guest in royal houses. Now, his aunt and uncle were inside, talking with the princess’s mother and father. His older cousins had run off with her older siblings to play, and being the same age, they had been stuck together.
No one else was ever as young as him in the Kilvasi castle.
She answered but he didn’t know what she was saying. She probably couldn't understand him either... But she put the flowers over his brow as if it were a crown, then sat back in the grass, fluttering her fluffy white wings with pride.
It was the first time Naesala ever felt like he was really a prince.
II.
“Come on, Nae! You gotta at least try!” Reyson laughed at him as the young prince struggled to get out of the water. His black wings, new and glossy with flying wings, were weighed down by the river and he flailed his arms in a desperate attempt to find sanctuary on the bank.
“It’s not funny!” Naesala squawked. “You pushed me in!”
“You pushed me out of the tree, we’re even!” the young prince continued to snicker. Naesala began to consider that this was what he deserved for making friends with the rowdiest Herons. The rest of them were calm and dignified and liked to sing and skip and talk to him about poetry and philosophy and art. But Reyson and Leanne wanted to sneak away from the castle grounds and hike up mountains, build stick forts, and catch frogs. This visit, Reyson had insisted on making Naesala learn how to swim.
The young raven accidentally gulped in a breath of water as he tried to swim, and he felt his head sink underwater. He tried to cough, but couldn’t find any air. His wings were heavy on his back, pulling him under--
And then a pale hand took his and pulled him up with a grunt and a stumble. As Naesala lurched onto the river bank, he fell on top of Leanne and they both cringed in the grass.
“A-Are you alright?” she asked, worried as Naesala rolled off her and began to cough up small spurts of water. She rested a hand on his back and crouched next to him. “Nae?”
Sucking in air, Naesala opened his eyes and looked up. He saw that face again, framed by gilded silk and housing green eyes that were filled with worry. For him? Gods, he hoped so. He never noticed that she had little freckles before, right on the edges of her cheeks.
“You saved me,” he mentioned in a smiling gasp that was meant to tease her, but sounded more sincere. Her hair was long enough to come forward like a curtain and shine sun through it, as if she were casting some kind of special protection over him.
“You didn’t swim at all!” Reyson shouted as he approached from up the hill. “That’s pathetic!”
Leanne sighed, tired of her brother’s taunting, and leaned forward to briefly kiss the raven prince’s head. “All better.”
Naesala didn’t know why his heart was beating so heavily in his chest. He didn’t think he was old enough for courtship yet.
III.
She played with the embellishment on his lapels, tracing lines of silver embroidery and twirling the tiny tassels at each end. Her eyes were cast down to the fasteners on his tunic, but he liked the way her eyes looked darker green-- like the inside of a willow tree-- when his shadow was cast over her. The shining gold of her hair dimmed to a smoother, almost molten shade. And he could see those freckles again from here. They were tinted pink.
“I already asked my uncle,” he told her. One of his hands rested on the wall beside her shoulder. His other hovered close to her side, wanting to touch her waist, her hip. “The ball is in your court, princess.”
Leanne’s lips turned up into a small smirk as her cheeks turned a darker shade of pink. “Is that how you ravens do it in Kilvas? You wait for a lady to make the first move?”
Naesala leaned in closer, his prominent nose just a scant half inch away from tapping her own. He smiled with all of the confidence and hope that came with adolescence. He might not be in the line for succession, but his uncle had recognized him as a legitimate member of the royal Kilvasi family.
“If we were in Kilvas, I’d whisk you off your feet,” he murmured. His own cheeks were darker too, even though he tried to hide it. “I’d take you away to the garden on the east side of the palace, covered in wild jasmine flowers and myrtle trees. I’d...” he hesitated, feeling his stomach twist as he tried to conjure the most romantic scene that he could. But he was still young, so was she.
“What would you do?” she asked, her eyes fluttered up from his tunic to his eyes, her finger that toyed with his tassel slipped and brushed against his collar bone.
Naesala’s eyes locked with hers. Dark and light.
“I’d recite to you all of the poetry written in tomes of love,” he told her, and it sounded so dreadfully cheesy.
“Would you kiss me?” Leanne asked-- she didn’t seem at all afraid of how bold her words were. She had not agreed to let him court her yet, but her eyes were challenging, playful, as if she wanted him to kiss her right now. Before her brothers and sisters found where they had snuck off to.
Naesala gulped and his voice sounded a little bit too hopeful and delicate when he answered.
“Yes.”
IV.
She was wilting behind iron bars, and he could see the bruising on her hands. She had tried to find a way out, but fighting against the metal rods only served to hurt her delicate blood. Her flesh and blood ran with seid and sensitivity, and he felt an angry bile rise up in his belly at the very sight of it.
But he held his tongue and he waited, with iron surrounding his own view as well. His wings screamed in pain, crushed and bound into the confines of beorc armor-- he wondered if they would be sprained or compoundly fractured by the time he could finally take the damn metals off. Wings were not meant to be contorted in such a way.
She looked at him in confusion at first, unable to understand why the guard he pretended to be was opening her cage. Why he was taking her hand.
But he leaned forward and he whispered in her ear-- his voice was twenty years lower, matured, and tired by now-- “Come with me, princess, I’m going to set you free.”
He had forgotten how to say it in ancient, but he prayed that she would be able to read his heart underneath all of the iron and steel.
Her eyes found his, somehow, around the helmet and visor. She did not smile, she did not speak, but her eyes softened just enough. He picked her up into his arms, as he so often used to wish that he could, and carried her from the tower.
“How’s that, Leanne? It’s been twenty years, but I’m still quite an eyeful. Don’t you agree?“
V.
She looked like the snow at their feet. She was pale and slight and because of her lineage, she had never been physically able to be very intimidating. He knew that being as close to battle as she had was making her feel sick. But still, she stood between him and the raging Gallian prince.
“Do not... bully... Naesala!”
The raven winced in that moment, because hearing her say his name always made part of him want to weep, and hearing her accuse Skrimir of bullying was enough to make him laugh at the irony.
“But... Naesala suffers too. Very very much... he--”
His urge to laugh disappeared. She turned around to look at him as snowflakes fell into her hair. The pure, frigid air felt twice as innocent, and he felt his own skin radiating with a toxin that was bound to infect everything around him. Even her.
“Leanne, I wish you would stop looking into my soul,” he spoke sternly.
And before she could tell him what she had seen in his petrified heart, the Gallian cub was preparing to charge, and he couldn’t convince Nealuchi or Leanne to flee. When his arm found its way around her middle, her arms latched to his neck. Despite the clumsy desperation he flew with, she fit like a long lost key there. As if he were a lock that had long rusted over, but only she knew how to wiggle her way inside and make him open.
He huffed and it landed in her hair. He could feel her breath briefly on his neck as Skrimir continued to roar.
He did not want to let her go. He wanted to fly back home, in the deafening silence, and hold her until he felt warm again.
“That was very brave of you, Naesala,” she murmured to him gently.
the curtain fell & in an instant, everything crumbled down, from praised to condemned. a holy knight. his efforts as one have been discarded & twisted. it would be forgotten & his hard work for nothing. lies have sullied his name & now his own blood would tarnish it.
his head is light but his heart's heavy with hidden tears. ( arvis made him sick. ) the holy sword shields him as he shifts painfully ‘round, witnessing his army burn to ruin. there’s no mercy. there’s only suffering. blood to dust. everything has come to an end. the stars stopped shining for him a long time ago, & even when his heart will stop beating, he refuses to settle for nothing. yet why should he live when everyone will die? there are fates far more cruel than death, he muses, for in the afterlife, he will be reunited with his lost loved ones.
his mind could have flown to seliph, edain, oifey—— but deirdre. deirdre. her silver mane tangling in the wind & he lacks the comprehension as to why she is here. her expression mirrored his & he lacked words, only pleaded to let him see her. ( denial. ) it left him heartbroken & he descends into madness. it is dangerous, lethal even—— to love intensely. was he being punished by the gods? ( it doesn’t matter. he would pull her away from her delusions again. )they didn’t watch over her like he prayed thousands of times, & the irony forces an insane laugh out of his ash - filled lungs. wasn’t he a man with holy blood?
she will be forced into hiding again, the spirit forest traded for a cage made of cold gold & deceit. which one is better? ( don’t do this to her. let her go. let her. it’s all my fault. kill me but let her be free. ) a nymph trapped in hollow walls, threatening to close ‘pon her. she will be lonely. he knows her better than anyone ever will.
baldur’s heirloom can no longer protect him. cries fade out in the distance as the tyrfing slips between numb fingers. like a last prayer, deirdre’s melodious laughter echoes in his ears, & his eyes are lost in red skies as his lips curl in misplaced joy. the flames scream louder & it bites his flesh, scorches his tears away. even in his lasting moment, he wouldn’t be allowed to cry.
Well, she LOOKED too damn beautiful to be allowed at a public gathering like this, in Naesala’s opinion. The sheer shirt she had tied around her legs did help to shield some of her fair skin from the sun, but Leanne was far more revealed than she usually was, and it was hard to stop looking at her. Even for a trained charismatic sneak like him.
With a chuckle in his voice, Naesala offered her a jar of sun salve, to help with the pink burns that had developed on her cheeks and arms.
“You’re stunning, and pink is certainly your color, but you may find this more useful.”
😊: You’re sweet. You’ve made me smile before.😇: Every single interaction we’ve had so far has been positive.🐱: You’re cute‼︎😃: I love seeing you in my notifications!🐸: You act goofy.📺: We have similar interests!😀: I would consider us friends.👍: I like you. Just, in general. I think you’re a genuinely good person.
//ahhhh mar I’m glad to hear all that, you’ve always been super friendly and nice and I’m very glad I met you right when we were both starting out with those blogs, it was really reassuring and all
you’re cute too ok and you write marz and leanne great and they are also very cute so you’re extra cute? that’s just how it is I don’t make the rules
Why Did I Follow Them?: hmm I think it took me a while because I didn’t realize they were a Leanne blog ?? im kinda oblivious like that I see people I know interacting with other people and I don’t really pay attention… I followed as soon as I realized tho bc ayyy Tellius peeps
Do We Role Play?: we do ! I mean. we got one thread going
Do I Want To Role Play With Them: yes
An AU Idea For Our Muses: join us in botw hell
A Song For Our Muses: hmmm that’s a tough one they barely know each other at this point
Do I Ship Our Muses?: not really
What I Think About The Mun: I don’t know them very well tbqh,, we watched Moana w/ the squad and they were chill, I do like when they pop up in the group on discord though & kinda wish they’d do it more haha. but quite frankly I associate them a lot with their März so I just kind of have this idea of them that they’re friendly & quiet
Overall Opinion: it’s really cool to have them around and I’m looking forward to continuing our thread !! I think Leanne & Marth will make an interesting pair bc they come from very different cultures but have similar manners bc royalty and all, so I’m excited about any future interaction
