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The falling motion followed through from the dream. Dhamon woke with a start, sputtering as the ship slapped back down into the ocean from the crest of a towering wave. He gasped as the world flooded back in. The creaking hull. The impenetrable darkness of the deck below. The firm warmth that he laid against, and that laid against him. His pulse quickly began to slow, and the waters went calm.
“That one was awful.” The sound practically traveled into his chest as much as it did his ears. A low, raspy rumble, punctuated by a sharp accent.
“Did it wake you, too?” he asked Gwynn, stirring in her arms to reposition against the hardwood floor.
She hummed to the negative. “Never got to sleep. I’ve never been on a ship this far out to sea before. It’s...not particularly pleasant.”
“It’s something you get used to.” Dhamon pressed the side of his head into her neck. “I guess it’s natural that a charr so dedicated to the earth would get seasick.”
Gwynn gave an indignant grunt and squeezed at him--almost too hard. “It’s not just that! There’s a storm of reasons why. My joints are still sore from when I had to chase after this ship, and I didn’t have time to bring any balm with me. I don’t know how you could fall asleep at all in conditions like this.”
“Krytan blood,” he chuckled. “Did the nervousness catch up to you?”
A long pause. She took in a deep breath, her chest pushing against him as she held the air in her lungs. Finally, a huff spilled over the top of his head. “I’ve never done anything like this before. I thought it would be easy to go on when I finally left that place. It felt as though it would be, at first. But I’ve only had time to think since then.”
“In times like those, I always feel better after coming to terms with the fact that I had already made the difficult choice. There’s no use in agonizing over the past, so I should only worry myself with the path forward.”
Her tail thumped against a wooden crate. “That doesn’t comfort me much.”
“Well then what would?”
“You.” Another tight squeeze. Dhamon shifted in place and brought an arm over her side to return at least half of the gesture, though his fingers still barely managed to reach her back, and he’d lose a limb if he tried to put one beneath her.
They stayed that way for a time. The snores and coughs of the crewmen mingled with the omnipresent roar of the sea. It was almost easy to forget how many other people were aboard this ship. Dhamon might have been embarrassed to be in her company like this, but it wasn’t as if any of them could see down here, and he doubted he should care.
“Did that help?” he muttered.
Another sigh brushed through his hair. “Not really. I know it does, though. I don’t think I could’ve left on my own. No, I know I wouldn’t have.”
“You almost didn’t.”
“I-” her voice cracked, immediately sending a jolt of regret through his chest. A massive paw moved over his back and gripped at his robes, as if he might disappear if she let go. “I know. That’s not helping my conscience, either.”
He rubbed at the side of her neck, scratching at the fur out of impulse. She never seemed to mind it much. “But you’re here now. You made it. That’s the reality you’re in.”
“The choice I made was to stay behind. Even if I changed it at the last second, that wasn’t my intention. I betrayed you, Dhamon. Then I turned around and betrayed Atholma. If I had failed to reach your arm, I might’ve…”
Dhamon pushed his hand further up and cupped the back of her head. He held his breath.
“I would have let myself drown.”
Exhale. “Gwynn.”
“I know. I’m here now, and the three seasons behind us are less than the three seasons ahead. I just- I wanted to say that. It was festering.”
Now his heart was starting to ache, too. Dhamon wrestled the arm folded beneath him out of hiding and pushed it flush against where her chest met the ground. That was about as much as he could manage from this position. She purred in response nevertheless, the sound traveling through his frame.
“That did make me feel slightly better, actually,” she whispered.
“I’m so glad you’re here.”
A small earthquake of chuckling. Mother of nature, he loved that sound. “As am I. I’d be dead otherwise, or regretting a decision for the rest of my life--however short that might’ve been at this point.” A short pause was filled by the groans of the ship. “Do you want to know what made me turn around?”
“I’m not sure,” he said. “Is that something I’d want to know?”
“Perhaps. I’m already spilling secrets.” Gwynn suddenly shifted, which meant that he was also forced to reposition himself. She helped him along by nearly dragging him up to her face and proceeded to wrap herself around him more adequately.
“I heard what you said while I was walking away. About how you’d come back for me. Halfway to my home, I thought about what happened with our assault on the asuran invaders, and I saw your life get blown out the back of your body the second time. For the briefest of times before that point, I had hope that you really would return for me, but that vision pushed me over the edge. You are too fragile. I would have never seen you again.”
What started as a cough turned into laughter, which he could only direct into the snout of her nose. She pulled back and made a confused grunt. “What? What was funny about that?”
“Come on. You really have that little faith in me, Gwynn? I’ll admit that I made a terrible mistake during that raid, and that I’ll endeavor to never make that same mistake again, but you can’t just assume I was going to die! You saw how Melandru has blessed me with her grace. I am still young, but I’m not a child.”
Gwynn exhaled from her nose and pushed her forehead into his. “I don’t care what you call it! We are acolytes of nature. It’s ours to know just how fragile life is! You could have been as powerful as your gods in that fleeting moment, with all the strength of the tempest at your beck and call, and it wouldn’t have mattered. The mightiest griffon may still wither from a single dirty nick. Nature ebbs both ways.”
“Okay, okay. I understand that,” Dhamon said. “But why are you so adamant that I would’ve died? Is that not for the whims of fate to decide?”
“Because I wouldn’t be there.” Both her legs eclipsed one of his, Gwynn emphasizing her embrace every way she could. “I cannot save you all the way from Atholma. Had I stayed and waited for your return, the days would have turned to weeks, and those to months, and again I would start to rot. Each day that passes while I'm uncertain you’re okay would be worse than the last. I need to be here. I need to keep you safe. I won’t-”
She choked, but swallowed the sob before it could interrupt the rumble of her voice. “I won’t let my cowardice get you killed. I could have hesitated to heal you on that day you nearly died. I had the capacity to, and that terrifies me more than any leap into the unknown.”
Dhamon raised a hand to her cheek in the darkness, brushing over her ears and farther back. The fur just under her right eye was wet, and though she moved away to hide the fact, it was already too late. He arched his neck to kiss her on the bridge of her nose and left his lips there.
“I trust you, Gwynn.”
“That’s why I can’t-”
“Ssh.” Another kiss, held for longer. She didn’t hide the sob this time. “It’s okay. You don’t have to worry. Trust yourself the same way that I trust you. Believe in the charr that rushed across the waves and clawed her way up the side of a ship for me, because that’s the only one you are, and I love you more than anything.”
She hitched on the last sentence, but allowed her body to relax shortly after. “You know,” she began, clearing her throat. “I hadn’t cried in over a decade before I met you. Now it seems I’ve been bawling like a cub non-stop.”
“I didn’t know charr could cry, to be honest. Almost doubted if their eyes could water like that,” Dhamon said.
“Of course charr can cry! Why wouldn’t we be able to? That’s ridiculous.” Gwynn exhaled in exasperation and pulled Dhamon against her chest, pushing his head back below her neck like before. He usually didn’t have much of a say in the matter, but he did manage to twist around enough to lay frontwards in her arms. His hands were almost immediately enveloped by her paws.
“...Dhamon. I love you, too.”
The creaking hull. The impenetrable darkness. The firm warmth that held onto him for dear life. He found rhythm in the motion of the waves for a second time, and his eyes became all the heavier for it. He kept the blooming dream at bay just long enough to hear a snore erupt from just behind his head. That reassurance readily pushed him over.