[SE] Silver Bells and Cockleshells

It is Isuma's trill that attracts Amalia's attention, her bare feet stilling once again, her body growing tense. Slowly, glacially, the Shield turns, hesitant and anxious in the seconds that stretch like eons between them, the thin and tumultuous threads of their bonds. Threads with vibrate with whispered sound, a spider's web brushed by the slightest breeze- -but of course she feels it, of course she senses it, of course she hears his call. The plants that yearn and reach for him are less important to her than he, kneeling, fallen in the earth, his face awash with trauma and pain. It is an expression which slices her more keenly than any knife, plunging cruelly into her heart and twisting when it strikes her soul. I did this. A heavy breath hitches into her lungs, sharp and audible in the silence of the morning. She can feel her heart thundering in her chest, at once horribly lost and woefully conflicted. Expression broken, shattered and split, Amalia shifts her weight uncertainly, her fingers coiling in her tunic as her dark eyes never leave the bard. Jigano, she breathes back, also silent. Would it hurt him more, if she lingers and presses? Would it hurt her more, to walk away? a m a l i a You were young and you'd stare With a reverence unimpaired Searching in your dark eyes to find the stars already there