It was just, she was the single fixated point in his world at that moment—the owls had never been strong enough to ground him when the storm came rolling in; their hearts were snatched up along his, pressed to his, but they twisted and turned with him because he was supposed to be their stability—their.. shield. (Just another thing he had never been good enough at.)

But with the torrent of his wild-edged, unrefined emotions howling just around the corner, just outside his skull in the thin lining between bone and skin.. she was there, and he didn't know if that bright electric light was outside in the tempest, or if it was somewhere inside his head—he just knew that it was something to focus on, something to drown in, blue swimming before his eyes and worry devouring his heart like a black beast.

Something in the back of his mind told him he had already asked—that he'd already tried to figure it out—that he had no reason to pry and that if that had been the only reason she wouldn't look better fifteen minutes later because she still hadn't eaten or slept.

It was just one of those moments when logic fails because you backtrack desperately, looking for something to hold on to, and her pain was the most tangible thing around.

“My Ma—“

Pristine, holy Ophelia.

He was beginning to have the incredibly uncomfortable notion that she wasn't at all who he had thought she was.

That he had been utterly, unforgivably wrong about her.

Or maybe that was just what time did. Maybe once she had been all that.. gentle and kind and steeped in a marble kind of perfection, something nearly religious about that pearly white coat of hers and the impeccable bloodstains in her hair—

He had come back after years, expecting to find her the same. A fool's hope. A fool's notion.

It lay like thick, black sludge in his mouth, in his throat, despair crawling through his veins in choking ranks, in time with the slowly increasing breath he heard rattling out of Roskuld's lungs—

Who is really the monster here?

Beneath the pristine white of her mask.. what lay beneath? What lay beneath the bone white of her skull? What lay in her heart? She had so many ghosts, so much bitterness, and with the fleet-footed fear running through his system he began to suspect another thing: that she had done something unforgiving to Roskuld.

(The name suited her better than Elding, he thought.)

“I thought my Ma left me the first time ‘cuz she hated the daughter she had...”

“…and every time I see her, it feels like I was right.”

“—but then I am myself and my Ma ended up leaving and I barely even know my Pa, and even after I found Ma—It’s like-- sometimes, Ma just gives me this look—and her eyes go dark and she’s not even looking at me anymore, it’s like I’ve got Pa’s face and I’m like, what do you want?! How can I fix that?!”

Her voice was a verdict echoing across the fragile links of time.

Was that what Snö saw in his eyes, every time they met? His own failure reflected there, the bitter and terrified poison—? Was that why her own eyes grew flat and hard, and her heart turned to such sharp and cruel words?

Cold laid thick across his skin, like a blanket in the reverse; it nibbled at him, stole into the cracks between him and her, until suddenly she was sitting upright and it stormed in, threatening to tear him from the moment and throw him out into that thing that raged just beyond the border of his consciousness.

Come back down, he wanted to say, it's cold, come back down, but he didn't say anything.

It felt like the moment would be startled away if he did.

As if this.. whatever, this pressure building like friction-static between them, would flee, and he would never know what sat upon her tongue, between her teeth, lodged itself somewhere in her throat and ran in circles but never came out.

It ends up that way, the cold, patient voice in his mind murmured into the silence, when you let the skin heal when the wound beneath is still infected.

There's no way to get the damned shit out of it without tearing it up again, and maybe that was what he had accidentally done—torn open her scars.

She said his name—funny, how it had become that to him—in the smallest voice he had ever heard coming out of her mouth, the tiniest sound he could imagine lightning capable of—

No, scratch that. He hadn't believed her capable of speaking with such soft terror, not when even her grief blasted shit to pieces.

And he knew what she was asking, because he knew that Ophelia was her Ma and that her Pa was some frightening asshole and even though his memory of it was fuzzy, he was pretty sure he'd asked Ophelia if it was Spark who was her father—

—and not to forget the wings.

Not to forget anything about this outlandish, loveable creature.

"You're Elding," he said instead, ears and eyes and voice pointed, fixed on her with some kind of intense focus—

"Ljós og hjarta..." And his lips curved into a small smile, it felt so weird but also right, but—but there was something in his voice and eyes that said,

I know exactly who and what you are.

And I don't give a damn about it.

[ @[Roskuld] ]

lord, the demands you're making-
help the monster on two feet
walk him down the hall, repeat
and when he's strong enough to stand alone
you'll notice what big teeth . . .