A deep soothing song

He could not know the thoughts that boiled in her mind, he should not be able to feel the palpable waves of agony that riled within her. But with every subtle expression she could not hide he felt as if it were his own. Each half urged lift and fall of her delicate shoulders, each furtive glance to the soil, to the side, to the sky... To his own pools of pale winter skies.

Her utterance of despair when she finally did speak confirmed his fluttering assumptions. With each fragile choke she tried to talk around he felt in his own throat as if a burning coal. He felt the relief she exhumed at her desperate wish.

He drew in a heavy breath, and let it out as he found the place within himself where she was an entity of her own and he found his steady center. It was not a sigh, but a meditation, a carefully practiced regulation.

She found his gaze and apologized with a half built mask he could see straight through.

Then boldness strikes her, a fierceness he had seen before, a fierceness he wanted to kindle and bring forward further. She asks of him no easy task, but one he would take gladly. To protect her family, and her kin, regardless of what happens to her. She moved her paw towards him. He pulls his paw out from under him and brings it forth to let her place hers up on it. He was here, he would support her.

He responds definitively, "of course." A promise set with confidence. The peace that fell in waves from her he soaked up comfortably. Not pushing or pulling anything from her. Simply allowing her to radiate and him to bask in her glory.

Then she praises him and continues to wish him farewell as if she were not the object of his righteous desire. A fire lights within him, as if the embers on his back were but matches. She tries to pull her offered paw away but he can't, he won't let her, not now, not like this. He places his other paw upon hers, gently capturing her hand within his massive mitts.

His gaze dances from one of her sunlit emerald eyes to her dark lips, to the other eye of hers, then back again. A question, a plea, a desire in his arctic blue penetrating eyes.

"I will treasure these thoughts you have shared with me. A candle can only burn so long until it's run out of wick and wax." His voice was warm, soft, and tender.

Her bold fierceness before stoked a yearning he could not tamp down. Emboldened by her blessing prayer he leaned slowly forward toward her face, gently pulling her paw closer to him. His breath intertwined with hers as he spoke.

"Do not fade away from me Haydee. I cannot let you, I will not let you fade away from this world before I have had a chance to know you."

He dared to quest his nose ever closer, barely touching her, he drank in the smell of her if she did not pull away.

"Haydee you have set my heart aflame. Your fierce earnestness calls me to you, I can no longer deny it, not when you wish to be no more. Not when you wish to fade away. My righteous desire, if I may be so bold is to see you safe, protected, beside me. I wish to take these heavy burdens upon you and hold them with you." Would she allow this? Was this far too fast and forward? No, not fast enough, not when she had been agonizing alone for so long that her flame had all but been lost.

"Perhaps such blessings could be bestowed... Much sooner than one day?" He dared to pull her even closer, to embrace her, to even... Kiss?

"Speech!"