Khaeris Dawndancer

Khaeris Dawndancer
Khaeris Dawndancer
@khaeris#23
2020-02-17 02:11:00

So Much

It was quiet. She sat on the floor of her wagon, slumped and still. She was tired. The sobbing had stopped and she was numb. Owlishly blinking, only slowly did she come back. Shadows lay thick around her, swirling in a soft fog with her every breath. Her skirt was wet where she'd spilled the vase in her lap. She didn't  notice.

Khaeris looked around the dark interior. The soft light the arcane runes Helal had scribed for her had faded to a thin paleness over the last two years. Her curtains and shutters were closed, her plants temporarily at Pollux's apartment and the automatic watering globes he'd rigged for her previously. The wagon looked tired, too, she decided.

Even the small parcels looked quiet. But the air smelled of fresh flowers and the hint of chocolate. Pollux had sent her flowers and a box of truffles for the holiday.  Her fingers opened the box and she looked at the perfect confections. For the second time, she closed it without taking any.

She had not expected the message on her comm from him. "You should get something in the mail today, Love you." He had remembered the holiday. He had planned this. He had tried to do something nice for her. It wasn't something that came naturally to him.

She'd rushed home from where she'd been at the front, helping at the healing tents in the Vale. She didn't know she was there. He'd told her he didn't think it was a good idea for her to go there. But she'd gone anyway, and she'd been lying to him.

Well. Not lying. But keeping a secret from him.

Her fingers drifted over to the larger card again, eyes tracing his handwriting. 

'It's been a good change to actually look forward to coming home, it had been a long time before I met you. You've been a saint throughout all of my deployments and every time I come home, I fall in love with you a little more.'

She felt the emotion welling up again. With puffy eyes and sniffling, she didn't feel like a saint.

Did love always mix with heartbreak?

~~~~~

"We aren't super clingy people. I thought I could DO this." Khaeris clenched her jaw against her failure, ears wilted with melancholy. She sounded whiny even to herself.

"But it's hard for him, too, I know it is." Dicenne countered in that gentle but steady way of his. "Not that I've personally asked him, but I've been there. It's hard to be away from someone you love, knowing that they are worrying about you and then there's the anxiety that 'are they going to stay' or 'is this too much?'"

Was it too much? Her heart sank as she listened to her friend.  "Maybe that's it. He's pulled away, or keeps the distance. Because he's worried I'm leaving?"

Dice continued to offer her the soldier's perspective. "They could find someone better, that could be there for them, and not gone. It was my constant worry at first. I thought my wife deserved better than that life. she could be happier with someone else." His voice was steady, speaking about his marriage, but Khaeris thought she could hear the emotions he was handling carefully. "We fought about that a lot. There's a lot of reassuring that needs to happen for awhile. On both sides."

The conversation moved on, but her mind would keep returning to the feelings of abandonment she struggled with, and with the anticipation of it Pollux probably didn't even realize he was.

"I've... kept things from him lately."

Dice gave her that look and she squirmed. He pressed, "What kind of things?"

"I haven't been compleeeetely honest about what I've been doing."

"...Like?..."

The words came out entirely too flippant. Too bouncy. Lively in her defensiveness. "I went to the front and was working the healing tents. I didn't tell him."

Dicenne cringed.

She felt like she'd been struck. Anger, sadness, and shame whirled through her. "Is it that bad?" A huff. "He knew I was thinking about it."

"I mean, if I found out my wife was out in the middle of a warfront without me knowing? I'd be pissed, yeah." She must have bristled, because he continued, looking directly at her, "Not that she was there, but that she didn't tell me."

"I told him I was planning to!"

Dice just kept watching her.

"...I just didn't tell him when I did it." Her chin rose with the color in her cheeks, though she shrugged as if it mattered little. "And he  told me it wasn't a good idea. But he doesn't need to worry about me."

"Going to an active warfront is never a good idea for civilians--no offense."

She took offense and felt herself grow sharp. "I was just in the healing encampments. I can HELP. They were happy to have me!"

Dice never rose to the bait. Damnable man. "Then tell him that. Don't hide it from him." He didn't let her off the hook, either. "Argue back, but at least let him know."

"I don't want him worried about me. And I'm capable." Her eyes tightened. "I am."

"Well healing encampments  get raided and bombed. That didn't happen, thankfully, but he should have at least known, even if he didn't want you there."

"He doesn't tell me what he's doing." Childish petulance felt better than the sorrow.

"He can't. He could  go to prison if he told you.... you know that right?" Dice said. "And shit, maybe he could have come and visited you there."

Her breath stopped. She thought she could  hear her heart crack. She hadn't even thought of that.

Dicenne recognized it, encouraging her emotional outburst. Her release. They both yelled over empty jousting arena.

It had felt good, a little. Gods and goats. Dice, always being right. Asshole. He hugged her again.

She smiled wryly at him with her last confession of the night. "He sent me flowers. ... He's trying. But I cried like a baby when I got them in my wagon. Just .... sobbing on the floor with flowers all over my lap."

"Happy...sad tears? Both?"

"Both. I miss him so much."

~~~~~

Week 14 - Secrets

Week 15 - Heartbreak

Week 16 - Love

Comments

Commander Braghaman Larethian
Braghaman Larethian · @braghaman#82
2020-02-17 02:20:04

Love the descriptions and imagery here. 

Dame Paynifier Ahalin
Paynifier Ahalin · @paynifier#59
2020-02-19 18:52:02

This is also a good topic to see - how the war in the world of warcraft affects those living in said world.

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