❛ i am yours. no refunds. ❜ Val&Havar /impish selection ❛ a sky full of stars, and i’d still watch you. ❜ ❛ if you take care of everyone, who takes care of you? ❜
& Valentine's libations – accepting !
@eddapoetic // Havar source (x)
Why would she get a dog when, even as she locks the bathroom door to go about her business in peace, there's the fanned edge of a crow's wing that slides underneath it, sweeping discreetly across the tiled floors. "Havar." Her voice is flat and stern as she stares at the gap underneath the door out the corner of her eye while her familiar clicks his tongue in mock surprise at having been discovered. "I will raffle you off." It's an empty threat, one of many that she issues on a weekly basis at the very least, or whenever the trickster gets carried away ruffling her feathers.
Valerie emerges some time later, clean faced, hair loosely plaited, in her dressing gown and lavish silk banyan, rubbing leftover lotion over her knuckles, and nearly walks head-first into a– "Qu'est-ce que..." So that's how he'd occupied his unsupervised fifteen minutes. All along the hallway ceiling, the corvid had hung frail little paper stars that dangled from bits of twine – dozens of them – employing his unmatchable speed but taking no care to cover his tracks: an old copy of the Yellow Pages lay gutted under one of the consoles, and a sewing drawer had been left in a state of disarray. She draws a long, patient breath, and moves around one of the stars to look at her re-humanised companion that lounged dandily against the doorframe, spewing cheesy pickup lines.
"Your luck resides in your looks, or I would have you in the doghouse for property destruction." Valerie plucks one of the stars, licks the back of it, then sticks it on Havar's forehead, brushing aside a chaotic nest of curls. For his effort. She conceals her amusement on the way back down to the lounge where the fire continues to steadily burn, journey during which Havar circles her like a cat, a torrential outpour of questions and comments to add regarding her pronounced fatigue and what had kept her out of the house for the whole day. Valerie volunteers some answers, but mostly opts to subdue him by distraction – scratching the back of his head while she pokes logs in the fire, inviting him under the fleece blanket where they can fit together on the sofa, heads on opposite armrests and legs in a tangle of limbs.
Who takes care of you?
She doesn't want to answer that. He doesn't need an answer, not when he's there so much of the time, watching, calculating, chiming in. The causes she throws herself into, the lost creatures she shelters in her home, the son she doesn't see enough of but worries herself sick over– there is always something to do, someone who needs her more than she needs herself, and time, time she has so much of, hours on an interminable stretch.
The weight of waiting.
Valerie retrieves her place in her current bedtime read and curls up so her temple is pressed to the leather backrest, the book resting on her lap, her free hand loosely cupping her pet's shin, offering gentle, mindless caresses.
"You do."
