Intervene in the perfectly natural bond of a mother meeting their babe for the first time. Of loving and greeting and rejoicing and crying and...
She did not mean to cry, but there was always an ache when she thought of all she had lost, all that had been taken from her when she had barely drawn her first breath.
“That should never have happened to you,” Grimult told her, his arm coming about her middle and holding her close.
He did not elaborate. Did not try to tell her of all the different ways the sages might have concocted to bring a delegate beyond the Wall. And for that, she was grateful. She had thought of that often in her younger days, when anger and resentment had festered. She had even drawn up a list and presented it to one of the sages on a particularly difficult day, and she remembered nearly screaming at him when he had smiled at her so patronisingly and told her he would review her proposals before they chose the date for the next selection of the Lightkeep.
Her stomach gave an uncomfortable twist as it always did when she imagined the one that would follow her. There was so much she wished she could say to them, to prepare them for the realities of their position rather than the fantasy strung along by the sages throughout the whole of her maturing years.
“I do not wish it for anyone,” Penryn murmured back, turning over so that her they were now facing one another. “When I was... particularly resentful, I would get so angry about what had been chosen for me.” She leaned forward, her forehead pressed against his chest. “But if it had not been me, then someone else. And it felt as if I was asking to rob someone of their happiness, and that seemed very wrong.”
An arm pulled her close, a hand stroking the back of her head through the long tresses there. She never had found the comb, but Grim’s ministrations had seen to most of the tangles, plucking and smoothing until the touches were languid, lovely things that spoke of more comfort than she could possibly have imagined.
“I do not blame you for wishing things were different,” Grimult assured her. “It is one thing to choose to be selfless, it is another for it to be demanded of you, time and again.”
She hummed a little in agreement, uncertain what to say. There was a confession at the tip of her tongue, one that would show him how very selfish she truly was, and she was not certain she should share it with him.
But this morning had already been about secrets and histories long buried, and she supposed her deepest feelings could be included in bringing Grim into her confidence.
“There is a part of me,” she began, not looking at him, closing her eyes and relishing how it felt to be held. “That wishes we could stay here. Pretend that we had never been attacked, that we do not know that there is danger waiting for your people and just...” A breath, her finger fiddling with the lacing of his shirt. “Just be.”
But even as she spoke, she imagined another slaughter, of a displaced people with centuries to stew on their anger and the injustice, finally pouring out their fervour on Grimult’s unsuspecting kind.
And if his family was hurt in the process? Could she truly be happy to live, sequestered in a forgotten dwelling, hiding him away for the whole of their days?
It was selfish in the extreme, not only to Grim’s people, but to him.
He should live nestled on a precipice, where his wings could be used even for the simplest of tasks. Not bound to the ground with her.
“They are not only my people,” Grim reminded her, his thumb delving and wheedling, finding her cheek and lifting her face up so he could look at her. “They are yours as well.”
Her mouth thinned, and she did not immediately reply, although the denial was already on her tongue. He raised an eyebrow, hand drifting to her back, where he knew her scars to be. “You think this changes who you are? Who you were born to? They took your wings, Pen, not your people.”
She had remained remarkably dry-eyed until then, and she did not know if it was the tender sureness with which he spoke or the shortening of her name—a name she was not even supposed to have—into something warm and familiar, or the suggestion that his people were not his, but theirs.
Except they were not. She did not live and work amongst them. None knew her, not truly, and none missed her when she was parted from them.
“They took both, then,” she countered, her eyes welling, but not quite filling, and she buried her face back in his chest before he could see. A sigh, deep and heavy, and he was back to smoothing his fingers through her hair, silence coming between them for a time. Not uncomfortable, a pleasant stillness as they both kept to their own thoughts. She felt strangely spent, as if the burdens of too much knowledge had finally been lifted. But rather than feeling free, she merely felt all the more tired, and she was certain if he allowed the quiet to continue, she could happily drift off yet again, content to pin him beneath her so he could not slip away unnoticed.
“In all those texts of yours,” Grimult mused, and she forced one eye to open, the better to try and listen rather than succumb to just a bit more slumber. “What did they tell you of family?”
Her brow furrowed, and this time he did not have to coax her to look at him. “What do you mean?”
“They were our peoples’ histories, yes? A simple recounting of what has been?”
