#bye sobbing

Ella brushed the hair from Esme’s forehead as she cradled the other woman in her lap. She was trying her hardest to not cry, to not let the shattering grief she knew all to well consume her once more. “I never thought I would love again, never be able to open my heart and you proved me so very wrong.” She took a shuddering breath as carnage sounded outside the castle walls. “And I am so sorry my kingdom’s problems have harmed you. I never wanted your life to be forfeit through my own inadequacies. I am-” her voice cracked as her chest tightened. Her gown pale green gown was stained with crimson, a color she wanted to ignore, wanted to ignore how fast she was losing her lover. “I am so sorry!”

❝      oh,  Ella.     ❞

IF ESMERALDA COULD SHOULDER HER BURDEN OF GRIEF,  she would have done so,  rending it from tender fingers into the slow embrace of peace.  it was just as they had always told her,  a suffusing warmth,  GENTLE,  beckoned towards an easy sleep that  quieted the battle outside to a murmur.  mere children playing at war,  not soldiers slicing through throats.  (  if she closed her eyes,  she could pretend that the BLOOD that dripped from her forehead was nothing more than the splash of saltwater,  the ocean welcoming her back again.  )  she had always thought it her fate to die at sea,  swallowed into the BLUE,  or perhaps a hempen rope  around her neck,  BUT NEVER THIS.  cradled into death in the arms of her lover,  a queen,  this life so far from everything she had once known. conventional wisdom would have been to regret;  after all,  was  it not every pirate for themselves  in this world ?  why risk your life for the woes of the landed states  who could bother with their armies on their own ?

but it wasn’t so.  for even in a moment like this one  Esmeralda cared only for the warmth of her hands on her skin.  what was worth dying for if not this ?   the tender gaze of a lover who looked at you like you were the WHOLE WORLD ?

 such effort to keep her eyes opened,  but she managed it for her,  for Ella,  for a few moments longer  –––  if only to keep her  BEAUTY  in her sight.  she would have liked to say more,  to WARN HER  not to drown in grief,  to WANT HER  to find love,  to keep her heart safe and dry  by the fire.  but there wasn’t time for all that.  if she’d had the foresight  to know of the outcome of the siege,  she would have penned some letter,  some secret note,  of all the depths that she could never properly express  in something so fallible as language.  but she hadn’t done. the only thing that mattered now was Ella getting to safety.  yes,  she was DYING,  she’d seen too many men succumb to the fate in battle to pretend differently. but there was no need for the both  of them to die,  not when there was a chance,  a single,  flickering chance  that her queen could make it out of this alive.

WOW