Of course - his endless appeasement always turned into her awakening, blooming freedom, and she hastened toward it, toward him, like he was her lifeline, her anchor, her tether and chord in the midst of horror and the promise of the sea. Her quaking limbs and frustrating shackles barely braced her frame upright, and she leaned, clinging, towards his golden sanction and breathed in his rays of sun, measured the grandeur of his strength and the rapture of his existence. The nymph clung to his radiance, blinded by the stature of it, by the nature of it, swallowing her gratitude and writing in his skin, bending and blending into his wake, matching slow, determined strides for his resolute ones, gathered between the blaze of his might and the scrawled outline of blights and scars. She shivered at the first hint of cool, chilling water at her feet, murmuring sweet nothings in its earnest babble, in its feverish current. It chiseled and sculpted into the fathoms of her burns, wrapped and tied, feathered and ribboned, patterns of lace weaving over her legs, her shoulders, her spine, and she took the slenderest of moments to appreciate it, as if she’d never get the chance again. She took a massive, grating breath, gulped down the ocean ambrosia, shook between incoming tides, and hung tight to the vitality of the gilded Thief. As they inclined deeper and deeper into the waves and shoal, she listened to the gulls, she smelled the salt, sighed, and ducked her head into his shoulder. She didn’t know what to say other than the timeless thank you, but it felt so empty and disheartened, because she could express a million thank yous and never reach what he merited, earned, and warranted. Instead, beholden and ashamed, the Mender tucked her soft maw into the coils and undulations of his muscle, swiveled her ear, pressed it towards his ribs, and heard the beat of his heart. It was a beautiful, transfixing, alluring, and rhythmic sound, full of crescendos and harmonies, neither wicked nor entirely virtuous, building and brewing a wonderful, mellifluous harmony; and she could’ve been the one to destroy it.

She’d been such a fool.

How dare she have dragged him into her mess, into her trials, into her tribulations. She would have been better off dancing into the fairy mist, asking for a fire-user, and begging them to set her aflame; never yearning for Roland to travel with her, never putting him in harm’s way. If she’d been altered and morphed beyond belief, beyond the realm of pain, perhaps into the reaches and folds of another world, one murky, one grave, then it would’ve been of her own accord, her own fault. The brigand would’ve never been in any danger. He could have wandered about their caverns and summits, touched upon ice and glacier, safe, secure, shielded, and her fate unknown. In hindsight, the tapestry painted in her image was more appealing than his burnt frame, fallen into ashes, draped beside her in a coil of embers and coals. The notion choked and devoured her, and the fey nearly twisted away from him, unworthy of his presence all over again. She thought, perhaps for the thousandth time that day, how much she didn’t deserve him.

Lena, soft, quiet, and dulcet, stared openly at him, taking in every nuance, every expression, every notion flickering across his features. She memorized the angles and lines, the sweep of his brow and the gentle curl of his voice, the influence and power in his shoulders and chest, and the way his eyes matched the sea beneath them, impossibly blue and beautiful. Like a sudden storm, because she couldn’t hold them anymore and the guilt wore down on her heart more than she could understand, words tore and burst from her mouth, offered and bestowed like so many times before, eternally apologetic for all of her mistakes, for all of her errors that could have cost him his life. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked you to come.” She ignored Imogen’s chirps in the back of her mind, the frustrated swell of the kitsune’s voice reaching amidst the constant regrets (wanted you safe, just like me or he doesn’t want to hear it, I know!), because she’d been at fault, and she needed to right her wrongs. “I couldn’t bear to live with myself if you’d been-" The last segment of her statement lanced and strangled off into the distance, and her eyes fell down upon the swell of the tide and the unsung reticence of the ocean, harrowed and hollowed. She didn’t want to fill in the remorseful blank, with unknown travesties or ill-fortunes somehow rewritten; not when she’d been responsible for the horrors and terrors of the day. Had she been allowed to hide and bury herself in the churning waves, she may have done so, become some long-lost mermaid, forgotten in her shame and rue. Instead, she merely retreated back into his shoulder, the last refuge she had.

@[Roland]
- For Sun God quest. ^_^]