herald-divine-hell reblogged
“I must be cold, hard, Juliana,” murmured Tayaím. “Colder than death, harder than time.” A glimmer of pain sparked within his eyes, before they sealed close. “I don’t want to be, but I have to. Awa has the right to be warm, the right to be merciful. I am death, Juliana. The one thing all beings fear; and I cannot be merciful.” A silver thread slipped down his dark tanned cheeks. “You cannot love me.”
Tears, she thought, and her heart went out to him. She had seen this face before, on his own twin’s long ago - when the days had been sweeter and warmer, hope and joy coming with the dawn in the horizon. It was a face she had seen on herself far too much. The face of feeling as if there was no use to follow a path, for one simply returned to where they were. An endless cycle that would go on and on and on…
Her hand rose up, jerked back when she saw him flinch away, and his eyes opened with the glow of panic. Anger rumbled in her stomach, churned like the great seas rousing to a storm. If she ever got her hand on Nuridaud, he would beg that it was Tayaím he faced and not her.
Calming the wrathful storm in her stomach with small, short breaths, she let him see her palm, allowed him to watch as she laid her hand on his cheek. His breaths were sharp and haggard, his eyes filled with panic, a winter storm bursting in silver and white and stroked with bolts of midnight blue. Yet, she watched as the fear went out of him, heard it as much as well with a small release and a shudder of his shoulders.
“Does fire not burn, misacaino? Does the sun not scorch meadows of wheat from small bursts of agitation? And are you not as well Savior as well as Doom?” she asked. “A title your sister holds as much as you, my love.” Her voice grew lower, watching as he stared with questioning, fear dwindling, eyes; and her heart nearly burst when she saw him lean his cheek against palm. Her thumb stroked his high-ridge cheekbone. “You cannot tell me I am forbidden to love you, because my love is my own, and who I give it to comes from me. I choose who I love, and I love you, Tayaím Lastborn.” Do you love me?
Within his eyes a mist grew, a thick shroud that hid the glow of the moon beneath its shivering waves. More tears fell from his eyes, and he took a long, shaky breath. A nod and nothing more came from him, but it was all Juliana need.
She drew him close and rested their foreheads together. Her thumb continued to stroke his cheek, and she smiled when she felt his hand rise hesitantly to to cup the small of her back, drawing her into his lap. A giggle left her before she could halt herself. “You’re comfy,” she said, shifting a little in his lap, and giggled some more when she saw his face erupt as red as his sister’s hair.
“Thank you,” said Tayaím, his voice a little shaky and more than a little shy. “I have been told..well, I never really been told that my lap is comfy. I…nevermind.”
“Elegantly put, Oh great god.”
His eyes narrowed, playfully it seemed to Juliana. “I’m not the god of poetry!”
Her hand rolled down to his cheek, started to trace the small scars cutting across his full, soft lips. “I bet you can play a great many poetry with those lips.”
He drew her closer and hid his face into her dark hair. “Father preserve me.”
