Pale, perked ears twitch at the short, bitter snort of amusement that pushes past her delicate nostrils. And, with darkened eyes, he watched the lost despair wilt from her face, replaced by her confidence— but also with something cold… something cruel. It licked the back of her rose-kissed eyes, gave an edge to the slight shake of her head, placed hardness in the set of her jaw and movements out of the pool.

He let her pull out of his hold—only because he saw her moving towards the shore. Though eh was close behind her, great bulk quick to place himself between her and the water she had toyed with slipping beneath. And he watched her, ears listening to her apology as he rose from the red-stained waters. In another circumstance, he would have noted the rivulets of water tracing the dip of her flank or the curve of her chest. But now he saw only chafed skin, teeth marks on ivory that was once kissed by rose rather than blood. “Do not give me your apologies. Give me your promise that you will value yourself… and your life,” was his quiet rumbling return to her apology.

“I met by mother.” His disturbed gaze of her wounds rose back to her face and silences his low voice. And he watched, felt her eyes sweep up to the tip of his horn and he tensed—but then her words wove a reason for her sudden shredding of skin and collapse of spirit. So, he did not interrupt, letting her bleed off the poison and right herself amid her revelations of the past.

And his silence was rewarded with a smile, a small and wry grin spreading across delicate, blushed lips that had been contorted in wretched pain when he had first found her in the pool. But her next words—the crime of loving Hawezi? His great skull cocked slightly in confusion even as his eyes warmed at the thought of his son (living and breathing), for indeed who could not love his boy?

”I have committed the crime of loving you.” His brows raise as her breaths steady her words; though a shield partially shuts his soul from his eyes as she speaks of his ghosts; the dead demons of Mara and Faxr whose haunting was kept at bay only by the beat of Hawezi’s heart— “But late at night, what is left of my heart’s hope tells me that you are mine, Tembovu, and I am yours.”

And his shields dropped, the whispers of demons swept aside as his eyes widened at her raw, honest words. His own, thick lips part slightly, gaze finding her raised eyes before tracing the line of now-exposed flank beneath her lifted wing. He blinked once, eyes traveling back to her face as she spoke again, “I would like to know what it feels like to love.”

In the face of her chafed skin, her bloody teeth marks, her raw eyes staring straight through to his soul he would have denied her. He would have wanted to wait, to hold and soothe and calm and heal; to make sure that, given her past, this was what she truly wanted; not a desperate grasp onto a reality that, in the wake of her vision and confession, was tilting and spiraling away from her.

But he was a man. A man whose mind had been cast in the shadow of his deeds, only to be brought to the light by the open honesty of those he loved. And this woman, proud and broken, had shown him nothing but truth and trust. What else was love built upon? It was so different than any of his other relations—except Mara…


And her words, “And if you would have me, I would like to know what it feels like to love.” Those were not words he could deny. They were a plea and a promise, entwined on the breath of oblivion—a denial could bring that breath gusting out, leaving ruin in its wake. But acceptance (sharing of souls, of skin) could give absolution from the torture left as red staining the pool’s waters.

So, still silent, his legs moved forward while his neck stretched out. His muzzle tracing along the sharp angle of her shoulder, beneath the delicate curve of her wing joint. His lips paused at particularly raw skin— they did not caress the tender flesh, but merely hovered to mark and note the places of wounded cream.

And he paused at her haunches, chest pushed against her tail, his head laid lightly against her hip with eyes closed, low voice rumbling, “I will show you love, Orithia.” And he rose on hind legs, black lips gently sweeping aside strands of her silken mane, quiet murmurings of “Njiwa,” fading into the sounds of shared skin.


—fade to black—


His thick neck slipped over her slender one, holding her to his chest. Part of him wanted to look at her face, to look into her eyes and see that she was good, that sharing herself with a man once again had not ruined her or brought her back to the days of the pleasure houses. But another part of him, the part that won, wished to hold her tightly and feel that she was okay. And, if need be, contain any aftershocks of all that his dove had been through.

Tembovu & Orithia

an Elephant and his Dove