DEIMOS
Heave the silver hollow sliver
The teasing had the desired outcome, a fiery glow resuming its inclination around her cheeks, but not saying anything more about the matter: he’d hoped to apply a little more taunting and a little more desire into the atmosphere, partially to entertain himself, partially to instigate and provoke. He thought about purposefully moving into her presence, invading her space, pressing and pressing, enticing and alluring, a beguiling indication of his affection. It was wanton and avaricious, but if they both craved and yearned and longed – his eyes went back to the food and hid a little sigh – later, so naught burned.The lustful edges billowed away on the scope of her excitement and ebullience, a level of enthrallment reminding him of stars and constellations behind threads of the sun, listening as her delight simmered on the fringes of the little house, echoing in leaps and bounds. His heart responded much in the same pleasure: a map in a deity’s library, displaying mountains and oceans, the rest of the world; he wondered if there were edges of cliffs in there too, rolling crag, wide-open fields and meadows, or other places, intervals he’d never seen beyond the realm of war and pillaging. “Then when we get a chance, we should go.” Not an abandonment of duties, but an opportunity for escape, for adventure, for something other than the surrounding intervals of pending desecration and bloody tirades. There were bound to be more kingdoms, more sovereigns, more and more and more.
Deimos watched as she rolled the dough, listening for the further deciphering of her mother, of medics instead of bakers, Abandoned; she could’ve fit in well with those in his life before – Menders and soothers, assuaging the broken, scarred contortions to their fleets. So she’d taken after her grandmother instead, blending in those talents in medicine and fighting, reading and writing, applying them to pastries and business; he hummed a little in thought, nodding. “Which one led you to the gods?” Or perhaps that had been all on her own, intrigued and curious about things entirely beyond reach: he’d tried once or twice, but when he was ignored, he simply detached himself from their shrines. It hadn’t gone well since.
But then she was silent as his own tale wove itself around the enamel on the wooden structures, clenching his jaw a little, waiting for some weight to drop and fall along his shoulders. She paused and he arched his brow, not expecting her hand to reach along the void, but he accepted it anyway, fingers curling around hers. Hadn’t she died too? What was with these realms, striving to return and salvage the cracked, splintered souls, returning them to the present? His voice was strong and enduring after her question, their first encounter, lingering in the darkened halls of a ruined library. “Yes. I did not understand why I was having strange dreams. Why I saw things I had not encountered. Why I was brought back.” He still didn’t know – no answers forthcoming, except when Kiada ensured he had purpose.
Unite and spread the heart apart
