KAJ

the aurelight

Kaj had loved a lot in his life. He had handed his heart to countless souls, shy and sincere in his affections. He had loved them simply, chastely, but profoundly. He would have spent the span of the mortal life he'd been granted at their sides, devoting himself to their happiness, if only they had deigned to let him. He had never hungered for more. He had never dared to cross the line into anything as primal and possessive as this. It had seemed like a stain upon their virtues to see them in such a light too soon, to reduce them to mere objects when they were so much more in his eyes. Kaj loved so strongly that he did not need lust to try and fill in a gap that did not exist. And maybe he did not love Sohalia, but love had cheated and defiled him, and he would not taint her with that impurity. He would not force the ghosts of the women he'd loved upon her visage, to taunt and grate upon him in this perfect moment. He would not force her to live up to a standard he considered above himself, for even now he could not condemn the ones he'd loved for their treatment of him. 

He allowed himself this moment, allowed himself the touch of her skin and the trembling of her heart that echoed the bruised organ in his own chest. The tears burned at his eyes but never came, because he was so starved of touch that he did not know if he would be able to pull away when morning came. He'd lived so many years shunned and removed from something as simple as the touch of her forehead, and he drank her in like an alcoholic breaking his four year dry spell. He wanted to clasp her to him, wanted to prove that he was capable of taking this pain away from her. He wanted to drag her burden upon his own shoulders, because it made him feel for a moment like he had a purpose. But she lifted her wings and denied him, and his soul cried out in confusion. He did not know how else to exist. He did not know how to live for himself, and here she was asking it of him. 

She turned the mirror upon him and made him gaze into the face of his demons, and the only way he could was to draw upon the strength her own broken fortitude supplied him. Maybe he did not need to shield and defend her in order to find purpose. Maybe this, just this, would be enough. Existing, chasing away the cold and the pain together, as equals. 

Kaj had never experienced this kind of equality before, so willing to do whatever it took for the sake of love that he'd never been awarded. And yet she taught him in every small movement and unspoken word, a proficient and patient teacher, unaware of the deliverance she was granting him. Maybe he did not love her romantically, permanently. But he loved her, at least, for that. 

So he whispered "okay" and let his wings fall away, let her bite along his crest and draw forth from him an emotion and drive he had never experienced. And he let it fester in his chest, feeling like a poison being sucked free of his veins, and he fell into her. 

Oh, for the sun loved the moon...

- - -

Daylight came, though the chill could not be erased by its faint rays of warmth. And yet even as his frame shivered, Kaj felt as though his chest was warmed and less hollow than he had been before. Like maybe the numbness had receded, if only for the moment. He awaited her quietly, feeling suddenly too large for her small, beautiful frame as it stood beside him. He felt the same desire he always did, as if he sought to build a house of cherry wood with calloused hands, to braid roses into her hair and sweep the misery from her shoulders with an errant gesture. He did not love her, but he cared for her the way he did for all others. He wanted to find a quiet place for her to find her peace, whether she wanted him part of it or not. He was sorrowful in the face of her pain, because he knew it so intimately. 

And he would never wish it upon her.

Her softly professed fear gentled the blue of his eyes, and he brushed his muzzle gently behind her ear in a parting gesture. "I am too," he confessed quietly. "But we can't know if tomorrow will be better unless we move towards it." There was no overt optimism to his tone, in fact one that was rather defeated seemed to lace across the words. Each step hurt, each breath burned, but he had to execute them if only to cling to the hope that in the next second, minute, hour...things would be better. The pain would ease. It had eased with Sohalia, in the starlit pond, and so he knew it to be a truthful statement. "If you ever need me, if only for a moment...you need only find me," was tentatively whispered, as if afraid she would reject his offer, the tentative friendship he proffered. The possibility of finding solace in someone as broken as she, as they had last night - though perhaps not in the same way. 

But maybe they would walk away from this a little better. A little farther down the path to healing the wounds they still carried with them.