BRUNNHOLD TO VIENDA | LATE EVENING, OVER THE CITY
The panic rose as she spoke, worried about what she’d said and how to fix it, breathing sped up slightly and cheeks flushed with frustration and shame. The Hoxian shifted, making excuses for her behavior, and his lashes fluttered with the effort. Oh Gods she was making it worse! Her teeth pressed into the dusky curve of her lower lip firmly, not quite enough to break the skin, but enough to distract her from the feeling in her stomach. He was complicated, but she was smart! She thought she was anyway. If she could recreate the injury on a hundred years long dead passive femur, then she should in theory be able to figure out a clocking living breathing galdori.
I also am afraid that if you do see all of me that it will not at all be what you hoped for. I have a strange feeling this is a normal fear once one comes to realize just how much they care about someone else.
“Hoped for?” Lilanee blurted suddenly, almost laughing at the preposterousness of it, before catching her breath. She realized then that, actually, she had the same fear. Did that mean…
I've already got one loved one to worry about at the moment, I certainly don't need you to make it two.
Her own words came back to her then, and the flush of frustration on her cheeks darkened a little into something more intimate. What exactly, were they confessing to each other here? Did they entertain the idea of ‘love’? But, love was just a combination of chemical reactions in the brain causing a sense of ‘belonging’ and ‘union’. In the case of her father, and in some level her mother, it ensured that her parents wanted to protect her as an infant, and over time the familiarity was comforting to all involved. They loved her, because they were genetically designed to, and she them. The idea of ‘love’ itself was a fantasy. It was no more real than Daegerotes or hatchers.
Right?
That wasn’t to say they didn’t feel something toward each other, but admitting a label to it felt…well actually it felt right but it shouldn’t.
Ezre smiled, a bright rare thing, and Lilanee forgot her train of thought, focused on the beautiful way the light shifted on his features and seemed to illuminate the whole room. Oh, was it normal to be so giddy over a facial expression? The teenager swallowed hard at the direct conversation about their intercourse, unable to stop herself from brief flashes of memories, focusing hard on the actual words he was saying. Her hand slipped from her lip, and she let her lip escape, trying to make the concepts connect in her head.
Ezre had let go of the idea of gender, because as the Hexxos guide and with the awareness of the raen, he had freed himself emotionally and physically. He had made room, lest another take over, to ensure they were not bound by the idea of being a ‘man’ or a ‘woman’. At his question, Lilanee blushed. That was a taboo topic for Anaxas, and Hesse in some ways. And yet…
“I wasn’t attracted to your anatomy, you know that Ez. I was attracted to your mind, and your…soul. I would…it would be hard if you were female, if only because of Anaxi views on people of the same gender in an intimate relationship. But…I would...love...you the same. If you were to die, and inhabit a feminine form, I would still want what we have.” The truth of it was strange to hear out loud, and hard to admit without feeling a sense of dread. She had been raised in Anaxas, by a Hessean and an Anaxi. If they heard her speak just now, she would be immediately scolded and frankly put back onto the path society had written for her.
Ezre took her hand again, placing it firmly back on his chest and holding it there this time, and it was impossible not to notice the way his eyes strayed. He was leaning against her, so comfortably close, and Lilanee felt herself tilting her head ever so slowly closer. Her own periwinkle gaze drifted between the dark pools of his iris’ and the tattooed curve of his lip, unable to disguise the warmth in her field as they spoke of intimacy and love and attraction and how the anatomy didn’t matter. It was serious conversation, and for the first time, Lilanee felt like she understood.
They, really, is what Ezre should be called. Not a he or a she or any sort of limited construct of Anaxi right or wrong. They, them. She loved them.
Clocking hell, yes, she did love them.
I know that you always mean what you say, even if perhaps you say it in far more words than necessary. Your sincerity is genuine and lovely, vre'ia, and there are times I envy your transparency."
The teenager broke into a small giggle, not ashamed by the statement. It was true, she had a vast plethora of words at her disposal which she used in great force at all times, and Ezre liked that about her. Envied it even. She wanted to lean down and kiss them, her heart fit to thump out of her chest. Only then the ship lurched a tad, and Ezre closed their eyes and Lilanee was reminded that they were in no state for that sort of shenanigans.
By the Ten this had been an emotionally draining day.
She lifted her head, wetting her lips with her tongue and looking out of the window of their private cabin. It was dark outside, nothing but blackness greeting her from the beyond. Way down below, the lights of some township passed beneath them like reverse stars. It was beautiful, in an eerie way. The red head reached for her glasses, taking them from her face and settling them in her lap, rubbing the bridge of her nose, before looking back across Ezre and out the window.
“I don’t even know if I am sure of the direction I’m going myself to be honest. I’m scared, truthfully Ez.” The ninth form said quietly, her brow drawing slightly in thought as she tried to pull together her thoughts.
“I am positive he is alive, and I will do anything to prove that before I attend a false funeral or plan his flower arrangements. But I’m frightened that if we don’t find him, that if I was to ask you to look for him…amongst the dead…that you…that he’d…” Lilanee swallowed hard and looked down at her hand on the Hoxian’s chest.
“I’m scared that if you were to reach out to the dead, that he might reply. More than anything else in the whole world. I’m so scared.” The last words came out as a whisper, her throat trying to seize around them, thick with emotions that threatened to overwhelm the usually chatty Hessean. She smirked wryly, allowing her eyes to finally meet theirs again, brows lifting slightly.
“Of course, no matter which way he replies to us, I’m going to find my father. He doesn’t deserve to be left in the Anaxi wilds, no. He needs to come home to me.” Lilanee said firmly, though her lip trembled a little, and she inhaled deeply to fight off the tears that wanted to come. It was all to real saying it out loud, all the things she had danced around in Ezre’s room, and she didn’t know how to handle that.