How long did it normally take to finish this type of beverage? What was the average time? Because if she’s willing to look at me like that every time I force myself to swallow this saccharine liquid, then I will drag it out indefinitely.
When I’m not waiting for Jasmine to grace me with the smallest glimpse of her, I’m messaging Sai and Ezekial about Julien.
My brother has just swapped out with Sai, and his report is… concerning.
Julien’s beast is inconsolable.
Starving, yet unwilling to feed. Desperate for her, but denying himself.
This has happened before, that isn’t a lie, but the circumstance was never this. We were never trying to console his beast.
I tried to speak with it, then Julien, but he’s too far gone. They are one, and all they see is her.
I glance over the top of my phone, attempting to be covert as I watch Jasmine feed two fox-like creatures.
The wide skylight above floods the atrium with the morning sun, drenching her in gilded rays. She smiles down at the creatures, tentatively reaching out her hand and coaxing them with soft words they cannot understand. When one finally fares to take the food pinched between her fingers and scuttles back, her smile only widens.
I’m staring. I’m more than aware. But I am powerless to look away.
Yes, she is beautiful, any being with eyes could see that, but it’s more than that.
She brings light everywhere she goes. She is warmth, kindness, care. She is everything I am not. And the light is drawn to her, follows her, clings to her.
I am the dark moth who cannot resist, desperate to be scorched by her. For when she casts her light upon me, even for the briefest moment, it softens the heavy darkness I’ve always despised.
She brushes her hands over her skirt before standing and walking towards me.
I don’t move, still leaning against the wall with a cold coffee in one hand and my phone in the other.
“You don’t have to drink it if you don’t like it,” she says, smiling.
I stare at her. “I do like it.” Because you gave it to me.
She huffs softly, still smiling. “Kane, you’ve been holding it for an hour. It’ll be freezing.”
“I’m savouring it.”
What am I even saying?
But she doesn’t seem to mind my nonsense. That soft, closed-lip smile spreads into a grin, and as if the universe isn’t already trying to torment me, a stray ray of sunlight breaks through the skylight to bathe her face in more golden light.
Immaru.
“What was that?” she asks, with that smile never leaving her lips, but when she sees my reaction, which is to immediately still and reinforce all mental barriers—it drops away. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to… I didn’t realise that was an inside thought.”
She edges onto the planting table beside me, and I continue to stare blankly ahead.
My control of the dark has been impeccable lately, stronger than it has ever been, so how did that happen?
Have I exerted myself with Julien too much? Or is it simply her?
“Is it strange to miss something you’ve never had?” Her vague question disrupts those thoughts as I follow her line of sight. She’s staring ahead, studying the two orange foxes in their enclosure now chasing each other. “Is there even a word for that?”
“Saudade.”
Her eyes latch onto my profile. “What language is that?” Her voice is soft.
“Portuguese.”
