A stitch away from making it

She stood at the border, looking up toward the castle, shifting from one foot to another, her claws slipping free repeatedly and stabbing at the soil as her feet flexed anxiously. Standing here waiting for him to appear made he think of her thought process immediately after her father had ran out of the den they had shared for a brief moment. One of her first thoughts was that she needed to go to Artorias. It was like her instincts tried to drive her somewhere and to someone that would make her feel safe. Artorias was at the top of the list, followed closely by Asla. It had been eating at her how much she wanted to come see him, but knowing that her father was here kept her at bay. Her fear outweighed her need for comfort. Now that her father was back in Armada lands she wanted to be anywhere but there so now she was here. It was like a constantly rotating cycle of running and hiding.

As soon as his blue and black form came around the castle wall and into view she felt the tension in her shoulders she didn't realize she had been carrying begin to decompress. Seeing his easy grin made her expression soften, a sigh passing her lips while she resisted the urge to just run up to him then and there. She could pretend for a moment that nothing had happened and she was just here on any old visit, but that feeling went away when his amber eyes drifted down to her neck where the bite wounds that her father had left near her throat were still healing. His smile fell away and that tension returned, her ears folding back against her head. She didn't want anything to be wrong. She wanted to put everything back in its place, pretend that everything was fine, and ignore that anything had gone wrong. As far as she was concerned Resin wasn't dying, her mother and brother weren't dead, her father hadn't bitten her, her father hadn't come back from The Hallows cut to hell, she didn't feel guilty about not checking on him, and she was just be here to casually visit her best friend. Why wasn't it that easy?

When he looked back up at her, her eyes begged him. Make everything right, make it better. And he did. He moved toward her, wrapping her up in a tight embrace the same way that she had done for him when she came rushing to check on him after hearing about Resin's condition. She crumpled into him, sinking down onto her haunches and pressing her face into the side of his neck, careful not to jab him with her antlers. Her antlers that made her look even more like her mother. Her mother that was dead. She hadn't cried, really cried though any of it. She perhaps had teared up a bit at her mother's funeral, but she wasn't sure. She had blocked it immediately from her memory. Artorias holding her like this, protecting her, finally chipped away at the shell she had built enough to let those emotions past her frozen anxiety. Her paws wrapped around his back and she held herself tight to him, hiding her face in his fur as the tears fell hard and fast, quiet sobs making her tremble as all the loss and mourning and fear and pain got washed away from her system.

"Briar" | "Marigold"