[narrow width=700]Hearing Amaranth's lighthearted attempt at a joke took some of the electricity out of the air, though grey thunderclouds still loomed like an impending evil over her thoughts. The golden woman edged closer with each halting phrase, until finally she was close enough that Valeska could feel her warm breath stirring the soft white fur that ringed her cheeks; it was dark and sweet, and for a moment, the edges of her vision blurred as a peculiar feeling came over her. It felt similar to the aftereffects of consuming an herb, but lighter, and her stomach suddenly flipped unexpectedly. She recognized it as the same sensation during her first encounter with Rhelenso, when he had finally stood over her and gently caressed her neck with his muzzle, before he...
But it was not the same.
With Amaranth, there was a deeper closeness. She had been with Valeska through it all; the lonely beginning, their happy days in dappled sunlight spent at Hiraeth's Temple, and now waking together after death in a strange world full of new faces and undiscovered treasures. Hunting, sleeping, foraging. Working in tandem to find and bring their packmates back together once more, and it was even Amaranth who discovered the beautiful crystalline lake that they would claim for their own to begin anew.
'Lack of sleep will plague the bones, despite freeing the mind,' the golden woman finished. Valeska smiled as she remembered all too well their first meeting in the boneyard, how Amaranth had stumbled about deliriously like a lost wraith, drunk on exhaustion and visions and babbling mysteriously at figures unseen by all but her own amethyst eyes. Yes, she would be experienced enough to know what a lack of sleep might do to a body. She never took care of herself properly, a fact that bothered Valeska more often than not. Amaranth should have been too pure, too beautiful to let herself fall to pieces the way that she did, but her wild spirit was prone to wandering; she could hardly be blamed for following the desires of her soul, even if it meant she got a little scuffed up along the way.
'Come, then, talk to me.'
Her voice came out like a cat's purr, but the set of her jaw and the barely perceptible narrowing of her eyes betrayed her. A thousand stories behind those deep orbs welled up and bottlenecked at her throat. How was it so hard for her to speak freely? Valeska rarely experienced moments where she felt tongue-tied; if anything, the opposite plagued her, and words often fell out of her lips before she could even have a chance to think them first. She wondered at her friend's unspoken past, what terrible things must have happened to silence her so. She was a woman of few words, and what little speech she did make was cryptic and difficult to follow, choosing to communicate through riddles rather than dare risk her true feelings be let out on vulnerable display.
Because that's what it was, wasn't it?
Vulnerability.
Once, somewhere in the distant past, Amaranth had been vulnerable, and someone had cut it out of her.
Valeska ached in painful sorrow for the Amaranth that might have been. She was proud of her, though - in their months together, one childlike step at a time, she had moved forward. In moments she might have otherwise run, she stayed. In shows of grief, she soothed. In days spent hungry, she shared. Like watching a rare and delicate flower before its first bloom, she was slowly becoming the wolf she was meant to be all along, and Valeska was there to hold her up for every moment of it should she ever have need of her.
So lost in the cloudy haze of warmth and pride, the silver wolf almost didn't hear her friend speak.
'Valeska...
She shook her head, snapping to attention.
'I--'
She leaned in.
'You do something to me. You make me feel.'
Why she had been hiding.
'That's why I ran. I tried to feel something else. But I could not stay away. In this life, or the last.'
Numb, she sat rigid as a carving made from stone as Amaranth swept forward in one fluid motion to take her in an embrace. Stock-still, nailed to the floor of Amaranth's den, she remained absolutely motionless as the golden warmth of her friend pressed against and coiled around her, long and languid and soft like silk. Lavender and the scent of fresh rain flooded her senses, but she could not register why. She was blind and unseeing, deaf and unhearing.
Moments passed, locked in an embrace that neither could be torn from.
Amaranth noticed something wet falling against her shoulder, dribbling fat droplets down her side as water suddenly found itself rolling away and splashing quietly against the earth near her paws. The ceiling wasn't leaking; the den was dry and watertight.
Suddenly, great, ugly sobs wracked the little body that lay nestled within the crook of her neck, and Valeska collapsed against her in a pitiful heap.
“Amara... Amara...” she hiccuped, her voice cracking with the effort. Painfully, she pulled herself away to look her in the eyes, her own golden gaze brimming with tears as she struggled to collect herself enough to speak.“I did not think... I thought...” The little wolf bit her lip, a hard lump forming in the back of her throat as she tried to find the words. “When I found Rhelenso...” she began, faltering. “I thought he was where I was meant to be.”
She took a breath, steeled herself.
“But I close my eyes to sleep, and I see you. I wake up, and I see you. I stop in the morning and look at the mountains, and I see you. You are in the air I breathe. Every step I take. I go far from you, and feel closer still. Everywhere I go, there you are, too.”
Shamefully, sorrowfully, Valeska looked at her with eyes open wide, raw and real and in pain immeasurable.
“I find that I... I am not myself without you.”
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the staff team luvs u