HOTARU
There is nowhere safer, more solid, than here in his arms. She is wretchedly reminded of the story Ashamin had told her what seems like lifetimes ago. A beautiful snowy bird, struck from the sky, falling into the arms of the mountain below. How he had promised to always catch her, how her beauty had blinded him and her love had brought him to tears. In the end, it had meant nothing. Merely empty words that had not kept her warm when he had abandoned her, womb full of his child and a kingdom to lead. Perhaps she had been considering the story wrong this entire time.Romantic love had led her astray so many times before. Never for lack of trying on her part; they had found their way past the barricades and blockades of her heart, and she had rewarded them with hidden tenderness, unfailing devotion, support, love. Every time, they wrapped their hands around the softest parts of her and squeezed until she was left a wreck of shattered hopes.
But Deimos had always been there. Her King, her Lord, her companion in all the trials they faced side by side. She had never even considered romantic feelings for the man that holds her now, so firmly and yet so gently. Even here in this new land, she can't conceive it. He is far too precious to her, a brother more than anything. But unlike those ephemeral loves, he has always been her mountain. Her bedrock, her summer sky, her support and her freedom. He was far more fit to cradle her body when it was struck from the sky, and he was as unmoving as the name implied.
All this time he had been beside her, and she had been blind to the one person she could trust with anything. Her heart is weary, broken by lovers who never stayed, but here is the key to a love that is pure and platonic. It washes over her endlessly, and her tears flow faster even as relief drains tension from her shoulders. There is nowhere safer to be than here. He cradles her as she has always needed, and in that way, she finds her wings once more.
His promise is understandable, and she accepts it for what it is, nodding frail and breakable against his mighty shoulder. Deimos never wavers as he holds her close, Hotaru still weightless in his bearlike grasp. She hangs there, uncaring of when he deigns to release her, content to simply cling to him like a particularly stubborn koala. Trusting he will keep his arms firmly around her, she leans back and cups his face in her small hands, unashamed of her tear-stained cheeks. "Your eyes are still the same," she whispers, overcome by gratitude that at least this is the same. Runs a thumb gently across his grizzled cheek and lifts herself just enough to place a kiss upon his stalwart brow.
"I never got to say goodbye," she grieves as she pulls away, eyes tight with pain at the reminder of that rainy day. I was afraid I'd never see you again. I'm so glad you're back. Things she wants to say but finds they don't convey the magnitude of her emotion. But she lets them linger in the air, unspoken. Sure he will understand. Instead, she gently tugs his face to and fro in her hands, smiling beatifically. "And here you are. Twice as handsome! Have you been well?" Hotaru's teasing subsides here, voice soft as she asks it, hoping for his sincerity and honesty. Had he found peace? Joy? Love, perhaps? He deserves all of it and more, and she prays he is happier than Kiada, that his tale will not break her heart any further.
you are the sun
you heal and
you burn
