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augustines2014-04-24 04:21 pm
smithereens) wrote in augustines2014-04-24 04:21 pm
Entry tags:
the city in which i love you.
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.
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Sihai doesn’t know what possesses her, as they lie tangled up together in her bed, to run her fingers over the planes of Shakir’s face. He’s not a heavy sleeper, even if he’s an early one, but she uses soft, whispering touches and he doesn’t stir.
He’s beautiful, she thinks. Handsome too, in her eyes, but so beautiful that it hurts to look at him. Even now, as she brushes her fingertips over the line of his brow, his jaw, and examines the splay of his light eyelashes over his cheeks. As the waxing moonlight sets his skin to glowing.
It hurts. She dips her hands downwards, following the strong column of his neck, the curl of blonde hair that pools in the hollow of his throat. The slope of his collarbone, where it connects to the smooth muscle of his shoulder.
This isn’t the prince that she imagined in her bed. She can’t dwell on how he arrived here anymore; it doesn’t erase the gravity of their crime or the hopelessness of their plight. It doesn’t change the emptiness of their future, how she must walk past him in the halls as nothing more than queen, his brother’s wife, and endure.
Sihai has endured many things. Her mother’s wrath, her father’s indifference, the heartbreak of first love, the uprooting of her entire existence. Her brothers’ mistreatment, the disregard for her life and happiness.
She doesn’t know if she can endure this. To hold this man, this beautiful man, in her arms, to have him, to feel the steady, anchoring weight of his arm claiming her waist, and let it all go. The happiness she feels with him, the completeness of her body and soul when he’s near is too big for her to contain; to steal it away in some tiny fraction of an already-fractured heart is too much to bear.
It hurts.
Shakir finally stirs, his eyelashes flickering, and she realizes that she’s crying, her hand pressed hard against his chest, where his heart thrums, alive, under her palm.
“Sihai,” he says softly. It’s not precisely a question.
She can’t speak, but there’s no need. Shakir pulls her close, arms winding around her waist, and she folds into his embrace, her cheek wet against his neck. She cries like she hasn’t in years, her hand still pressed against his beat, beating heart.
“Sihai,” he says again.
She shakes her head. This space between dusk and dawn, the only place that they can call their own, feels heavy on her chest. The night, where dark and dangerous things can be tucked away for a time. Not enough time.
She closes her eyes and lets the night claim this too.
.
.
.
Sihai doesn’t know what possesses her, as they lie tangled up together in her bed, to run her fingers over the planes of Shakir’s face. He’s not a heavy sleeper, even if he’s an early one, but she uses soft, whispering touches and he doesn’t stir.
He’s beautiful, she thinks. Handsome too, in her eyes, but so beautiful that it hurts to look at him. Even now, as she brushes her fingertips over the line of his brow, his jaw, and examines the splay of his light eyelashes over his cheeks. As the waxing moonlight sets his skin to glowing.
It hurts. She dips her hands downwards, following the strong column of his neck, the curl of blonde hair that pools in the hollow of his throat. The slope of his collarbone, where it connects to the smooth muscle of his shoulder.
This isn’t the prince that she imagined in her bed. She can’t dwell on how he arrived here anymore; it doesn’t erase the gravity of their crime or the hopelessness of their plight. It doesn’t change the emptiness of their future, how she must walk past him in the halls as nothing more than queen, his brother’s wife, and endure.
Sihai has endured many things. Her mother’s wrath, her father’s indifference, the heartbreak of first love, the uprooting of her entire existence. Her brothers’ mistreatment, the disregard for her life and happiness.
She doesn’t know if she can endure this. To hold this man, this beautiful man, in her arms, to have him, to feel the steady, anchoring weight of his arm claiming her waist, and let it all go. The happiness she feels with him, the completeness of her body and soul when he’s near is too big for her to contain; to steal it away in some tiny fraction of an already-fractured heart is too much to bear.
It hurts.
Shakir finally stirs, his eyelashes flickering, and she realizes that she’s crying, her hand pressed hard against his chest, where his heart thrums, alive, under her palm.
“Sihai,” he says softly. It’s not precisely a question.
She can’t speak, but there’s no need. Shakir pulls her close, arms winding around her waist, and she folds into his embrace, her cheek wet against his neck. She cries like she hasn’t in years, her hand still pressed against his beat, beating heart.
“Sihai,” he says again.
She shakes her head. This space between dusk and dawn, the only place that they can call their own, feels heavy on her chest. The night, where dark and dangerous things can be tucked away for a time. Not enough time.
She closes her eyes and lets the night claim this too.
.