‘ i would thank you , but we both know you don’t deserve it. ’
poetry starters, ( accepting ): @phantasplendent
lucretia releases a deep, slow breath through her nostrils, gaze sliding away from lup with only the barest hint of struggle.
when she’d returned, rocketing out from the pieces of the umbra staff a glittering blaze, lucretia couldn’t look at her enough, even in her effervescent lich form. she hadn’t left anyone memories to remember her by, but lucretia had hoarded her own, felt starved because one hundred years of memories couldn’t feed the ache of absence lup’s disappearance had left behind. her loss had been a linchpin, the final straw for her, and gods, she had searched and searched for her with the same fervor she’d pursued the relics, desperate to find her too, except…. her thoughts freeze, dissolve, candy floss in water. none of that really matters now, does it?
had that extraplanar deity—no, not deity, she thinks, that’s too quaint a word—extraplanar entity thanked her? lucretia’s thumb rubs over the calloused pads of her fingers where they rest at her side. in this moment, she can’t recall. she thinks not, and for that she’s grateful.
“i don’t want anyone’s gratitude,” she says, and for an instant she sounds so fucking tired. she is the shelves in her private quarters, overstuffed with books, bowing beneath the weight of them. she will carry this for the rest of the life she has left, and it’s there, heavy on her tongue.
a muscle in her jaw twitches, relaxes. she shuts her eyes; breathe in, then out. she’s good to go. lucretia finally looks to lup again, takes her in (and in and in, whole and real, and the sight of her is so novel, so wonderful, it nearly blows away all the bad of it):
“what’s done is done.” she spreads her hands, a gesture that sixty, seventy, eighty years ago would’ve looked helpless. “there’s not much more i can do, is there?”