[They are once more shivering wet and cold in the verdant hush of the forest surrounding Oska, and he cannot adequately explain to her the heft of his love nor the customs inside which his heart is accustomed to operating. So too are they are one more in their shared chamber in the castle, dancing wordlessly in one another's embrace to stitch shut the silence as their disparate tongues could not. Then they had relied on touch where words had failed, but now she will not allow him this comfort: between them the air grows ever more brittle and his hands fall empty by his sides.
Achilles, she calls him - not her lord, nor her love, nor her song. Uttered thus his name is a hard bud unwilling to bloom.
It is once more all of the mornings he had awakened to find her gone from his bed, when first she had been granted a glimpse of the path Fate had set for her, the woman she would become and the family she would have without him. It is the night she had brought her daughter before him, and the night she had lent herself as a crutch that he might hobble back to town with his wounds mended but his pride mangled still. Between them he feels every fracture that ever has run through their hearts, each compounding the other to split ever wider until there remains naught but what is broken.]
A man requires a wife that he might find comfort in her embrace and support in her words. By his side she is faithful and obedient, and if the gods so bless their union she shall bear for him strong sons and beautiful daughters. All this you have given me but for children of our own - dare I dream that still we might have time to make this so?
[He steps forward again, but this time it is not her hands for which he reaches, but her hair, that which he had fallen in love with first. His fingers trace over one of the soft strands, as he has done so many times before, never failing to delight in how fine it feels beneath his touch. He rues now how in the calamity of the fire he had missed his chance to watch her comb her hair and fix it into braids, as has grown into a part of his own morning routine in the home they had here begun to make, the home that now is little more than ashes and ruined timbers.]
I know how your heart aches, but is it not enough that I love you? No matter my love for Patroclus, he cannot be my wife - for this task, there exists only you.
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Achilles, she calls him - not her lord, nor her love, nor her song. Uttered thus his name is a hard bud unwilling to bloom.
It is once more all of the mornings he had awakened to find her gone from his bed, when first she had been granted a glimpse of the path Fate had set for her, the woman she would become and the family she would have without him. It is the night she had brought her daughter before him, and the night she had lent herself as a crutch that he might hobble back to town with his wounds mended but his pride mangled still. Between them he feels every fracture that ever has run through their hearts, each compounding the other to split ever wider until there remains naught but what is broken.]
A man requires a wife that he might find comfort in her embrace and support in her words. By his side she is faithful and obedient, and if the gods so bless their union she shall bear for him strong sons and beautiful daughters. All this you have given me but for children of our own - dare I dream that still we might have time to make this so?
[He steps forward again, but this time it is not her hands for which he reaches, but her hair, that which he had fallen in love with first. His fingers trace over one of the soft strands, as he has done so many times before, never failing to delight in how fine it feels beneath his touch. He rues now how in the calamity of the fire he had missed his chance to watch her comb her hair and fix it into braids, as has grown into a part of his own morning routine in the home they had here begun to make, the home that now is little more than ashes and ruined timbers.]
I know how your heart aches, but is it not enough that I love you? No matter my love for Patroclus, he cannot be my wife - for this task, there exists only you.