❛ tender . kiss my muse on the nose [ please can lux kiss garen on the nose i need it more than anything. ]
Children are not bound to the abhorrence of their homeland, it is ingrained into them, imposed by the cruel mouths of their elders. It’s a transmissible sickness, inherited from fathers and mothers, cultivated in the hearts of the youth until they too were blackened by its loathing. Garen has heard the furtive whispers, the terse reprimand but as Luxanna’s light cast the room in a mosaic of colour, reflecting in the wide, awe-filled gaze of his sister, he wonders, if but for a moment, if that animosity has ever been justified. As if they had recited this before and they had, it is precipitously dispersed, her brother’s gaze is wide but unlike hers, teeming with delight, there’s a glacial trepidation. Has it crept beneath the door chasing the writhing shadows of dusk into the apertures of the hall, have their parents heard the commotion and are approaching, their hearts tremulous before her abominable power. In that tense silence Garen realizes he’s shoved the tiny, porcelain horse Lux had cradled between her hands and it lay now between them in fragments. It isn’t until her brows draw together, anguish causing her bottom lip to tremble that her sobbing permits him to feel the raucous thundering of his own heart. He should apologize, it’s the first thought he grasps for and yet the band of red has seared itself behind his eye-lids and an irrepressible part of him dreads that it might erupt from her once more. Abandoning the horse, splintered as was Luxanna’s heart in his untimely demise, he reaches out a hand and rests it against her cheek. It’s placating, he knows it’s all he can offer her, all he can muster. ❝ I’m not mad at you. ❞ his tone is even, deliberate, it lacks the soothing she needs but it doesn’t falter. that was what mattered. If they were discovered, if he could not rectify this, his concern is that she will reap the consequences of actions she did not intentionally commit. He coaxes her close, inclining his head so that their foreheads press together, grounding, it was something that appeased his anxiety in times rife with it. There were glowing cinders of it now tucked between his breast and as her incandescence was reduced to a palpable tension Garen felt their searing brand. ❝ It’s going to be okay.❞ he doesn’t feel reassured but Luxanna’s body quivers less, her chokes sobs wane into laboured breaths. It takes a long moment for the room to return to normal, for the disquiet that seethed in him to be subdued. She raises a fist to wipe at her eye, her golden lashes laden with tears. ❝ Brother..❞ Her voice doesn’t possess the fortitude of his, the way it trembles reminds him that his fear was also transmissible. It’s that same hand, delicate, tentative, that comes to rest on his cheek and she leans forward and presses a chaste kiss to the tip of his nose. For all the emotion that roiled within him, the conflict, it was as if this implicit forgiveness could quell some of it. ❝ It’s going to be okay, right ? ❞ she smiles, a weak, fragile smile but he finds himself nodding in spite of that, a tacit understanding that what had transpired in that room was to be shared with no one.
