shshdhhdjjsjs shalom………….. i miss her 😔😔😔 having so many thoughts about her but mmmm post-canon shalom………..
the past is miles behind you both, and buried deep beneath the soil. its corpse now feeds the fertile flowerbeds of your backyard gardens, encouraging blooms of roses and lillies and daisies and daffodils. shalom tends to her flowers every morning, and drags you out too—lest her notorious anti-green thumb cause her beloved flowers to wilt.
she stays at home while you go out to run a few errands and odd jobs here and there; you may be on a luxurious government pension, but the lack of something to do has never sat right with you. so you leave in the late mornings with a kiss pressed to her crown, and return just before golden hour with another against her lips. but sometimes— sometimes, the house seems a little too quiet when you’re gone. she knows you aren’t truly gone, and that you’ll always come back to her, but, well.
she misses you. that’s all there is to it.
and it’s what moves her to call you on a particularly gloomy afternoon. you were out, as usual, this time helping out a local store with some deliveries. she had smiled, amused, when you told her about the job— you never could turn down a request for help. it’s part of what she adores so deeply about you, enough to defy the will of heaven itself for your sake.
she counts the number of times the phone rings after she dials you—once, twice, almost thrice before you pick up. there’s a slight breathless quality to your voice when you speak.
“hey,” you say, and she can hear the smile in your voice. it makes one tug at her lips too.
“hello to you too,” she hums in return, leaning against the window as she sits in the little alcove, watching the grey sky and the lazy, rolling clouds. “i’m not disturbing, am i?”
“never,” is your immediate, sure answer. her heart jumps a little in her chest at the sound, and she brushes a hand over the firm plane of her breastbone, feeling the pitter-patter of the organ beneath.
“i learned from the best.”
her neck and ears warm, and she breathes a laugh against the cool surface of her phone. “is that so?”
“sure is,” you confirm, and she hears vaguely the sound of muffled conversation and the rustle of a bag. you cup your hand over the reciever, speaking to whoever it was beside you, before talking to her again. “was there something you needed?”
was there? shalom ponders the question briefly. the answer comes quickly to her, and she needed not any of paradeisos’s great computational techniques to find it. the answer was always there, locked in her once-unfeeling heart.
i need you, she thinks, always. “no,” is what she answers.
you’re silent for a moment on the other line, then hum quietly. “okay. i’ll see you soon, then.”
“yes,” she breathes, eyes fluttering shut. funny, how she could once rip and tear even the strongest of people into nothingness with just her tongue, but when it comes to saying those words to you she finds it tied into knots, heavy like lead in her mouth. you end the call, and shalom lets her head thud against the wall as she looks up at that overcast sky.
but then, not even a few moments later, she hears the rattling of keys in the door, and a layer of tension settles over her form like morning dew. she can’t help the slight widening of her eyes or the surprised part of her lips when she sees you walk into the room, a knowing look in your eye and a gentle smile playing on your lips. there’s a paper bag in your hands, and it smells like freshly baked pastries.
“you came,” she manages, her voice uncharacteristically small as she cranes her head upwards while you lean down, letting your forehead rest against hers.
“you called,” you answer softly, then let out a tiny chuckle against her lips as your free hand runs through her wine-red hair to settle at the nape of her neck. “or not exactly, but i know you.”
she kisses you instead of saying anything else, because no word that she knows could ever do justice the way she feels about you. she remembers, distantly, reading a poem on love—on a love so much greater than words, that the poet has chosen to fall silent. she did not understand then, but she understands now. your words echo in her mind and the four chambers of her racing heart, carried by her blood to every fiber of her being.
yes, she thinks as she parts from you, gazing into your eyes, fathomlessly deep with love. yes, you know her, and for once in her life that prospect doesn’t fill her with something adjacent to dread. for what is there to dread about being known, other than the fact it shows she is loved?
