moon maiden, guide me.

he thinks isobel understands him best, when they’re like this, his frame sheltering her own, despite the fact that’s grown tall, despite it all, thinking, she can see past the vulture facade he’s put on, that he’s a simple, tender bird. that he’s long sought a vein of honey and not let himself taste that tender grief. she cries out, she cries, and it’s because he knows he’s poured his grief into her like water from a sieve, asked her to carry the things he cannot. but that too, is parenthood, molding your own grief out of a body too small to contain it all and asking that they be stronger, better, brighter, happier than you. 

his lungs are aching, his chest compressing, she is breathing again, torn from her marble casket, what worth having doesn't come with some measure of pain? his girl, isobel, as reliable as the sunrise in her happiness to see him. her loving him comes with pain, fingers digging desperately into shoulders free for once, from armor, he wonders if he taught her that, if she'll always be a child in this one aspect, so full of love it overflows from her, like trying to hold a flood in your hands, praying it won't overflow. it's a familiar sort of life. wrapping her tight in his arms, he's not sure if it's the pressure or the hard pulse in his chest, his heart not skipping a beat, but stuttering like a grinding gear.

a coward has broken their hearts and he’s unsure if it’s them or the people they have poured their love into. if he’s the coward breaking hers because he’s unable to be what she deserves. a good man as well as a good father. but how could he be? when all the goodness left in him has always belonged to her? a well run dry waiting for the drought to end.

or perhaps it's aylin, someone who can call her back home, because they’re the only person able to, and simply won’t open their mouth to do so. one day, today perhaps, a coward has broken her heart, and he thinks that it’s himself. afraid and unable to face it, when are you too old to learn of loss? 

that day in temple so long ago, did they teach mortality and how to survive on the other side of that flat line? that day in temple, did they teach how to care without breaking yourself to pieces? did they teach how to withstand the hunger and longing of wanting to be happy? did they, like they asked of him, ask for a family portrait, and did she question too, if she was meant to be in the frame, if the muddled colors were supposed to encompass a life that asks you to be happy yourself, and not dedicate your life to the happiness of others? 

she looks around, taking in a view of home, and ketheric grips her face still, thumbs curving over soft cheeks, thinking, with hands on her warm face, hands on my heart, hands on my stupid, fragile heart. 

mourning after all these years feels like being buried alive and he smiles at her still, pressing a tender kiss to her forehead, asking without words for forgiveness, because it’s hard, the hardest thing he has ever done to ask for forgiveness from someone he has always meant to do right by. asking forgiveness from himself for stumbling in the first place, from having to do this at all, this begging for clemency he’s unsure if he deserves.

" isobel. isobel. " unable to speak, some animal howling it's longing into the night, a wolf that's circled back to the fallen, whining and pawing at the frigid earth in winter. how he's slept at her side, at melodia's, hating the thought of them left alone. how grief has turned him into something small and craven, disgusting with filth and rot, how it's taken any seed of grace in him and killed it before it could sprout. watered with the acid of longing.

" -- papa - " her voice cracks; bleeds. a title she has not called him in decades ( to her knowledge ); abandoned when she'd proclaimed her dolls were too childish for her; when her skirts had lengthened, when she'd cut her hair and proclaimed she was ready to become his right hand; to take her in place by his side and learn - when he had changed to father. her tears come easy now; liquid silver stinging her eyes, trailing down her cheeks, body still trembling - she cannot quite piece together what has happened; only that she is here, and so is he - and in her shuddering, new heart, isobel feels it ache as though she has not seen her father in decades. 

" i don't -- i don't understand - " her words are hoarse and shaking - a tremor in her voice that she'd last had when her father's hair had still been black instead of silver, when she was in the spring of her life and he in the summer of his. thisobald had teased her terribly once; childish things she'd laugh at now, but at such a young age, it had been the end of the world. she remembers how her father had held her hands and wiped her tears - when you weep, isobel, you are giving him the reaction he wants. thisobald had teased her after, of course he had - but isobel did not cry; and the teasing stopped - until she grew to tease him herself. shaking hands rub at her eyes - desperately trying to blink back tears that never quite seem to stop; and a part of her worries she has failed him. 

but his hands are on her cheeks; warm enough to the touch; a kiss to her brow and isobel finds her chest aching, cracking open - ripped apart by something bigger than the two of them; her sobs echoing against stone, made fresh at the gentleness of his touch - weeping; is he disappointed in her? her own careful strength, cultivated and grown; tended to like a sapling in the garden -- she should be better than this, like him.

there is a part of her that wishes to be strong; to be as steadfast and sure, as stoic as she knows her father to be just as he is a man of deep feeling, of love, wants to straighten her shoulders and hold up her chin - no longer a child, not even a girl on the threshold of something larger than her - but a woman grown; diplomat, divine servant - hallmarks of an education well spent. all these truths do not stop her from feeling like a little girl again now; hurt and confused - lost in her own tangled thoughts; and tears flow freely, heaving sobs that shake her, gulping in air as though her lungs could not get enough - as though they have been deprived.

his arms around her are a shield; high walls that have protected and sheltered her all her life; a welcome place isobel knows she can always find rest in, and in his embrace, isobel crumbles - the panic that had paralyzed her ebbing away, replaced with a familiar sensation that until now had seemed out of her reach: home. and though isobel had long since grown ( no matter how often he had attempted to deny the fact ) the cleric melts; arms tight around her father, an island in the stormy sea that threatens to swallow her whole; head to his heart, his hand in her hair - she remembers once, when she'd been small - how she'd fallen and scraped her knee, and how he had always been there to help her back up.

her chest aches; cobwebs and rot still festering within her - each breath pained, each sob close to vomiting - and isobel coughs, retching; swallowing something foul that creeps up her throat, clutching at his shoulders, his arms as though this were all some terrible nightmare he could undo, just as he had when thunder had shook the very foundations of moonrise and the moonmaiden's light had been obscured by storm clouds; when he'd sat at her bedside by candlelight and told her all manner of tales of thunder giants and heroes brave enough to best them. if you grow a few inches taller, bel, you may strike down those giants yourself. she had never grown tall enough to fight them; and now, isobel feels smaller still.