#eyrie resorting to stiff formality to keep the distance bc they don't want to make lyse angry

[impossible-rat-babies]

wip wednesday!

i got tagged by @thevikingwoman and @roguelioness ! tysm you two <3 im gonna tag @scionshtola, @hythlodaes, @lavampira, @myreia, @birues, @hylfystt and whomever else! (i know some friends have been tagged already <3) I got two wips--one not spoilers for stormblod and the other post EW spoilers!

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Lyse stands beside them—just out of arms reach. The gap not wide enough for all the broken trusts and misgivings plaguing them since [redacted]. She crosses her arms, heaving a sigh as she stares up at the palace, brow furrowed and lips pulled tight. Hands clenching in her sleeves and they follow her gaze. Their arms folded, hands tucked into their armpits. they hunch their shoulders, sliding back half a step. This isn’t their stage—it isn’t their place up beside her. Not that she would want them there.

“At dawn, this will be it. The last push for the freedom of Ala Mhigo.” Conviction and tiredness fill her voice, her jaw set and her chin sticking out. They hold their words behind their teeth, watching the palace still.

“You will be there, I presume?” She turns to look at them.

“If that is what you want, Commander Hext.”

“And what do you wish for, Eyrie?”

——

“Ze-Zenos…” his name a stutter as it crossed their lips, “was my friend.” They breathe out, eyes fixated on the table.

“Did you care for him?”

Lips twist, brow furrowing; trying to find anywhere but her eyes before they speak. Hold the words tight behind their treacherous lips, even as the trace the words on the backside of their teeth with their tongue.

They turn their eyes to the open window—curtains fluttering. A cool breeze rushes in, the dim light of Radz-at-Han’s lamps only stretches so far to the moon—a silver sliver in the ocean of inky blue black. Casting their eyes further up towards the peak of the sky—further still past the darkest points behind those specks of light.

Maybe if they could just reach their hands high enough to the heavens—drag themselves further and further towards the firmament. Grasp in the dark behind the eyes of the stars to that place at the edge of creation—the little corner of that nest. And there would be something of him there. Some part of him still lingering in the loneliness of an emptiness before daybreak—a ghost in the stillness of motes of dust hanging in that cold air.

Maybe they could stretch enough like sunlight to grasp onto him—hold his cold, cold face betwixt their blood stained light filled hands and bid him come back. Whisper it with lips against his brow, their eyes so wide shut.

His name has been lodged in their throat since that day—stuck in their nose. begging to be screamed. To be wailed and rallied against the universe so indifferent to their grief. Maybe then the sun would break on the horizon and breath would break lips.

Maybe the universe would care about their grief. The beat of it beneath their chest and their ribs are cracking from the inside out. Wrists swollen and the outside edge of their palm throbs. Maybe it would care enough to finally let them be silent. No more songs to be carried on raw peeling lips and born from a voice that cracks. The final string plucked and the note would hang in the air long enough for one final bow.