Hand hovers and wing flicks away from it, of a piece with the downturn of her mouth. Her mouth which sets in stubbornness a moment later as she fans her wings out and flattens them down so he can more easily reach the base of them,
she is thinking of Granitefell, too. At first, she’d thought, I’m dying, as if time might have unbroken itself and the death she’d escaped had come grasping after her again. Every time she feels a hand on her back and not pain is proof otherwise, except that now she isn’t sure she hasn’t just traded one for another, worse and slower. She looks up at him, steeled to offer vulnerability where she feels certain it doesn’t belong and isn’t wise,
“Please,” she says, quietly.
(She can feel the way they flutter. She can feel the way that it’s her, doing it. She has bathed and changed and her armour taken to be cleaned and she can still smell— the salt. The death.)
no subject
she is thinking of Granitefell, too. At first, she’d thought, I’m dying, as if time might have unbroken itself and the death she’d escaped had come grasping after her again. Every time she feels a hand on her back and not pain is proof otherwise, except that now she isn’t sure she hasn’t just traded one for another, worse and slower. She looks up at him, steeled to offer vulnerability where she feels certain it doesn’t belong and isn’t wise,
“Please,” she says, quietly.
(She can feel the way they flutter. She can feel the way that it’s her, doing it. She has bathed and changed and her armour taken to be cleaned and she can still smell— the salt. The death.)