[ Because they didn't belong here. Because they'd have to return home, eventually. But she knows that, she'd known that all along. Logic doesn't matter to an aching heart. ]
I know. I know it hurts.
[ Were that there were anything he could do to stem the tide, but as much as Gilia bottles up her own feelings inside, he can do this much. The house rattles with her sorrow and distress, but he holds her still, stroking soothing lines against her back. ]
[ The kinder his words, the harder she sobs, and deeper, deeper it flows. A dark ebb that seems to answer an unanswered question.
That pushes back, curious and watchful, in that shimmer of power not forced all the way below the surface. Answering the pain. Why do you weep, child? is the rattle of pipes, the thunder of waves.
That in the silence between, seems to push at Anduin, just as much as it protects her. The words that are not words, the being that is not a being, a half of one soul to protect another, and which parts of Gilia are responsible for that sheer presence curl like stingers around a fresh kill, yet left everything else untouched. Growing in her like a coral reef. Somewhere deep in the curls of her hair and the shuddering something distinctly looks back at Anduin. Waiting, waiting, waiting. Are you harm or help?
No more than a drip, drip, drip of water against stone. As loud as the waves tearing a ship down in a hundred souls screams. That great maw that is the soul of darkness that is before, before life, that was old when mountains rose. That is new as each and every one of its teeth grows in, rows upon rows of jagged glass pieces to rend flesh. A light so painfully impossible it is to be beautiful and terrifying at once. A prince for my daughter? Or a shadow of false pearls? ]
[ Anduin's grip doesn't falter as he feels that ripple pass through her and into him. He is a priest, after all, and spirits are no unknown thing to him. Bright and beautiful and terrifying as that presence within her is, he doesn't flinch for a moment.
Her pain is his, and for all that his heart aches for her that familiar ache grounds him too. Loss is something he knows intimately, knowing loss longer than he's known any single person in his life.
But Gilia isn't broken in the same ways. Those wounds still weep, and it's all he can do to provide that anchor to her when she is so terribly adrift, as she once did for him. He hears the rush of waves, the echo of something primal, and presses back against it like a hand against a pane of glass.
Only a man. One who loves her, and shares her pain. No more, no less. ]
[ Long that silence stretches, long that silence stares. Loud that silence beats into a place between worlds, between life. Whether it is Gilia's heart or another could not be said, it is her voice, it is a thousand other voices, and it is always, always, that silence. Where she, herself, begins to almost dissolve in his arms in that strange another form, ephemerally slip to the place where even his hands did not touch, if he held a little tighter, it threatened, he would plunge straight through that shallow depth of woman to dark waters.
That finds the correctness in that response and settles, and at last - the rattling of the water, where the sink overruns, and pools water to the floor in a thin sheen, the aching groans of the internal pipework of the house rushing with such force, the bubbling over stove - all settle. All silence themselves.
Until there is nothing left, but those quiet sobs she takes on his shoulder, sagging exhausted into him. ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
I know. I know it hurts.
[ Were that there were anything he could do to stem the tide, but as much as Gilia bottles up her own feelings inside, he can do this much. The house rattles with her sorrow and distress, but he holds her still, stroking soothing lines against her back. ]
Just breathe.
no subject
That pushes back, curious and watchful, in that shimmer of power not forced all the way below the surface. Answering the pain. Why do you weep, child? is the rattle of pipes, the thunder of waves.
That in the silence between, seems to push at Anduin, just as much as it protects her. The words that are not words, the being that is not a being, a half of one soul to protect another, and which parts of Gilia are responsible for that sheer presence curl like stingers around a fresh kill, yet left everything else untouched. Growing in her like a coral reef. Somewhere deep in the curls of her hair and the shuddering something distinctly looks back at Anduin. Waiting, waiting, waiting. Are you harm or help?
No more than a drip, drip, drip of water against stone. As loud as the waves tearing a ship down in a hundred souls screams. That great maw that is the soul of darkness that is before, before life, that was old when mountains rose. That is new as each and every one of its teeth grows in, rows upon rows of jagged glass pieces to rend flesh. A light so painfully impossible it is to be beautiful and terrifying at once. A prince for my daughter? Or a shadow of false pearls? ]
no subject
Her pain is his, and for all that his heart aches for her that familiar ache grounds him too. Loss is something he knows intimately, knowing loss longer than he's known any single person in his life.
But Gilia isn't broken in the same ways. Those wounds still weep, and it's all he can do to provide that anchor to her when she is so terribly adrift, as she once did for him. He hears the rush of waves, the echo of something primal, and presses back against it like a hand against a pane of glass.
Only a man. One who loves her, and shares her pain. No more, no less. ]
no subject
That finds the correctness in that response and settles, and at last - the rattling of the water, where the sink overruns, and pools water to the floor in a thin sheen, the aching groans of the internal pipework of the house rushing with such force, the bubbling over stove - all settle. All silence themselves.
Until there is nothing left, but those quiet sobs she takes on his shoulder, sagging exhausted into him. ]