RP:Make You Mine
Summary: Irenic proposes to Valrae
Behind a Hemlock Grove
You begin to hear the soft sounds of water again, though you are far beyond the waters of Vibrance. Curiosity urges you forward, towards a particularly dark part of the forest and to a strangely well-tended grove of tall hemlock trees. A small path, one worn through the forest by travel, leads behind the grove and to a wide glade. Wildflowers and sweet grass grow hip-high in some places here. A stallion, easily twenty hands high and black as pitch, grazes lazily, unconcerned with his surroundings. A stream runs along the eastern edge of the glade and a well stands close to it. A stable of stone, the word 'Fury' carved above the wide open doors, rests between the well and the cottage. Standing tall in the west of the glade is a two-story cottage of the same stone. Smoke, white and wispy, floats from the chimney and the pointed top of the curiously crooked tower that seems to be attached towards the back. The wooden arched door is bold, berry stained red with a heavy owl carved doorknocker of iron. The windows are wide, with diamond patterned muntin work and stained glass. A small pebbled pathway winds between flower beds, shrubs, and droopy branched willow trees. It leads behind the home and to a fenced garden. A fat, long-tailed inky black cat can be found resting drowsily on the fence in a patch of golden sun and watching you with heavy-lidded emerald eyes. Here, the heady scent of herbs and flowers in bloom greet you. The garden itself boasts plants of all types, both useful and purely aesthetic, in full and clearly enchanted bloom. The herbs and flowers are arranged in spirals around a bubbling fountain. The carved image of a woman stands in the middle of the water with hands cupped around a crescent moon and raised above her head. Cool and clear water tumbles from her fingertips into the wide fountain's base. The forest presses close behind the garden's fence, the tall trees casting long shadows. The rounded and slightly crooked tower is seen more easily from here. Its odd shape boasts a lower oriel window and a balcony on it's highest floor. Ivy climbs and covers the beautiful stone face.
Irenic is just returning back to Valrae’s place even though he’s been staying there for over a week and Maude has pretty much been only stopping by here or there… She really didn’t want to walk in on them AGAIN. That was an awkward to which we all just pretend didn’t happen ‘haha, pass the gravy Maude’ and sweep that elephant under the rug. It’s kind of sickening, Irenic and Valrae, they are like a couple of teenagers since…Yeah. *clears throat* Okay! Um, they have done nearly everything together and gone anywhere IF they even leave, but they’ve been inseparable. He left a note this morning and slipped out when she was sleeping, though, note says ‘not like last time! Be back before you know it. Cross my heart and hope to die. You looked too cute and peaceful to wake up, please don’t jinx me, thanks.’ He’d spend the morning visiting an appraiser’s and then he had to travel to a place to sell the thing and then he had to buy another thing. Needless to say his wings and back are a little sore by the time he lands before her door. He walks right in, to hopefully find Valrae and he mentions, “I’m staaarving.” Before his hands find their way into his slacks so she doesn’t notice the tiny box there. After giving her a kiss to the top of her head he suggests, “what do you say we whip up a brunch to go and get outside for once to have a picnic?” That mischievous smirk given down to her with that glint in the lone silver eye.
Valrae was nestled comfortably in the cushioned window seat of her living room. Her hair was a golden mess pushed away from her face with a few smartly placed pins. Her forehead was pressed against the glass of the window, her dark eyes narrowed on a spot in her yard just a few paces away from the back of the cottage. Lately, with the way things had been going in the house, three seemed to be a little too much like a crowd for Maude. They had spoken about building on the place, before Irenic and she had even made up and taken to living together. Valrae and Maude were two women who had worked with their hands for the entirety of their lives. With Fury to do the heavy lifting, they had figured it was a project that they could tackle alone if they had too. With Irenic, and all of his lean muscled body and masculinity, maybe they would be able to roll up their sleeves and make the idea a reality. All she had to do was ask. But if she did, and he said yes, that would mean admitting that the world was still turning and they needed to leave her bed. The idea was unappealing to say the least. When Irenic strolls through her door again, the witch abandons her seat and bounces over to him. She tilts her head up, waiting for the little kiss he presses to her head and gives him a sleepy smile. "You were gone forever!" She exaggerates, being that she had only rolled out of her tangled sheets about an hour before this very second. Her quilt was still wrapped around her shoulders. "Sure, I made tea and coffee," Val offers, strolling with him to the kitchen. Maude was out with friends today, had been for the better part of the morning. "What's the occasion?" The witch unwraps herself from her quilt and folds it up before setting in on a kitchen chair. Her cat, Nox, was mewling loudly on the table. He batted at her with his over-grown paw, trying to steal all her attention away from Irenic. She busies herself with feeding him and scratching his head. "Where ya wanna go picnicking?"
Irenic took up a basket and started filling it with fruit and bread. He found the orange juice and some champagne which he hides under the rest, even slyly slowing away the little box so he doesn’t have to awkwardly fumble with it in his pants. “I don’t know, I feel like we can just walk and when we get there we will know it,” he said lightly before smoothing the top of his hair back and motioning to her front door, “onward!” Once she gets herself together he grabs a blanket or two while she adds whatever she wants to the basket and he’d make sure to hold tightly to the burden while slipping her under the opposite arm. Gently he rests his metal wing around her as to not let it be too heavy or poke her sharply, “I hope they don’t weird you out… Surely the old ones were way more comfortable.” He was smirking down at her, but honestly a little worried she doesn’t actually like the metal appendages. They continue on their way passed the river, but during this season it’s a little too chilly to sit near there and soon they were coming upon the towering tenements which was the only part he was dreading. This was where he pulled Quizzical’s body from the rubble and ended up saving other lives that day just by chance, but there were still some tents in the area of now homeless tenants. Another reason he doesn’t like coming here is because some of those people still look at him like some sort of saint just because he was in the right place at a horrific time. A lady comes rushing out of one of the tents with her family and a kid limping his way over in a cast, it's awkward and he accepts a hug from them. The lady has the audacity to look at Valrae and tell her all about how he saved her little boy and how Irenic is a keeper, one of the good ones and she better hold on tight to him. At this Irenic politely excuses them so they may pass through onto their destination and once they are far enough away he grumbles out, “sorry about that. Something along those lines always happens when I pass through there.” They pass over the elegant bridge and he stops suddenly looking at the spot beyond the knee high stone wall where they had one of their heart to hearts. “How about there?” He points to a shadowed space under a tree with enough sunlight dappling through to keep them warm, but not overly so.
Knee high stone wall
Piled one atop the other, rounded stones slither onward in a straight line, barely knee-high at this point. North, past the unworthy blockade, a cloud of sooty black smoke rises into the air, sure signs of civilization. Grass stalks grow as tall as the wall here, surrounded by its even taller kin, thick-trunked and leafy green atop. These trees stay to the sides of a thin path, well kept, considering its rural habitation.
Valrae chirps, "Okay!" While Irenic collects the things for this surprise picnic, the witch trots upstairs to throw on weather appropriate clothing and brush her teeth/hair. She takes the extra time to style her hair a little, twin braids from her temples to hold back the rest of her golden hair. She throws some quick, light makeup on her face and a cranberry sweater over cotton pants tucked into tall leather boots. When she returns to the kitchen the avian is swooping her out of the front door. "No!" Val protests, as they walk away from her cottage and toward Larket. "I love them. I love your old ones too," She leans into him a little to bump his hip with her own playfully. "But I love everything about you. I just want you to be happy!" She beams her smile up at him, only to have it fade quickly as they pass through the tenements. Valrae tries to replace it, through the warring of emotions that Quizzical's memory brings, and she tries not to be rude to the people that approach. She's glad when he steers her away from them though. "It's fine," She says, trying not to seem short or upset. She lets the sunlight soak into her face and tries to relax her shoulders. She agrees to Irenic without really looking. "As good as any." The witch helps him spread the blanket, her face a mask of calm and unusually quiet.
Irenic was setting up their little picnic while watching a certain spot of the area, one where they stood before. This was where she laid bare all of her being and some insecurities. She was honest about the child she lost and this was where she first met Quizzical. For the moment he was sitting the ghost of that memory and now he understood why he was drawn here. He gently clears his throat before repeating what he said under this very tree, "I find myself falling for you more and more every day and whenever you feel ready for something more I will be there. I don't care what you've been through, I want to take care of you in the here and now for I am not worried about your past. I am concerned on brightening your future…" He wonders if she would recognize the words he said to her there before and was smirking at her while handing her some food to eat. He takes out the second blanket and sits himself next to her in the quiet while wrapping the throw blanket around them. He then noticed she looked miles away and was quiet, “something on your mind Baines?” His expression softens as mismatched eyes attempt to look to her own.
Valrae tries to make herself comfortable. Her mind is following the same path Irenic's travels. To Quiz, the child she lost, the conversation that tipped the whole feeling of their relationship from casual to all in. They'd messed it up then. They'd both lost so much more than just each other. It would be easy to feel okay now, like she had before they'd left her cottage clearing, to bask in the sun-dotted afternoon and curl against the man she loved to get away from the fall chill. But how could she? And suddenly, Irenic is speaking to her, drawing her out of herself and her dark eyes to him. His words tug at the strings of her memory, familiar and far away. They ease the heaviness that had dropped like a stone into her heart. She wiggles close to him, largely ignoring the food as she so often was want to do, and rests her head on his shoulder. "No." She answers not so honestly. "Nothing, I guess." The witch pauses a while, letting the wind whisper songs through the trees and pull at the waves of her hair. "Sometimes, I just think about how happy I am. Or how much I enjoy little things. Like the sun here? All warm and pretty around us? Quiz, Hanna... Others. They'll never feel that again. What makes that okay? Why should I be this happy? Why should still I feel the sun?"
Irenic runs his hand up and down her back slowly, “it is perfectly fine to enjoy the small things, Valrae.” Her name was said slowly and softly like an incantation and bringing out his subtle Veretian accent. “We must… Remember Pete and Hanna because even though their lives were* taken during this unjust time it doesn't mean we should stop living our own lives to the fullest. I think of Quizy a lot when I am enjoying all the small things and in a way I enjoy it more because I feel him enjoying it through* me. I’m not sure if you completely understood that day, on the beach, when Quizzy brought me back* to you, but that was the only reason he moved on because he was waiting for us to reconnect.” A gives a half start to a chuckle, “just know they are always around us and always wanting us happiness because they know we are still out here fighting the good fight in their name.” He kisses the top of her forehead softly, “we can be happy, enjoy the small things and dedicate a small bit of that to their memory.” He’s seen a lot of death and this isn’t his first rodeo dealing with loss. “It is also okay not to be okay.” His arm slips around her waist and pulls her against him side by side as he adds, “at times I don’t think I deserve how deliriously happy you've been making me and the more bits a pieces I begin to remember I realize you’ve always made me that way. It’s always you, it’ll always be you.”
Valrae is frowning. Her golden brows furrowed, her bottom lip pulled between her teeth in thought. She listens to him, can hear the truth in his words even if it doesn't fully pierce the thick wall of grief she's thrown around her heart. She tries, hard, but something in her is holding her back. Afraid to be happy, afraid to try. Failure was scary and hard and it hurt. The last time they were here, the last time they'd tried... It was messy and painful and they had fallen apart. She wanted to believe they were stronger this time. She wanted to work to be stronger this time. He pulls her closer and she smiles, finally. "For me too," She returns. "I'm me, a better me, with you."
Irenic gently pulled himself from her and dug through the basket pulling free some bread to disguise the other thing he took out, but all the while he was talking, “you know… You make me better and when I am around you I get that same thrill from you like the first flight. Do you remember how that felt? Flying for the first time?” When she had described when they first met he recognized the look on her face so he knows she understands what he’s talking about. “I want to hold onto this feeling. I know our customs are not the same, I know our races don’t age the same, I know our lives make us incognito criminals that need to lay low, but in rebellion to all of that.” He had brought himself to rest on one knee before her after setting the bread aside to show the ring within a tiny velvet box. It was golden and encrusted with jewels, “I’m not sure of your customs or how to ask, but… Will you make me happy like this for the rest of our lives?” He holds the ring out to her with a half smirk which was half nervous.
Valrae jokingly made small sounds of protest as Irenic pulled away. She re-situates herself, pulling her knees up and the blanket tighter around herself. The witch is watching the sway of the branches above her with dark eyes, missing the small movements of her partner, and isn't pulled back into the moment until he speaks again. As he talks, her large eyes widen. Her stomach flops, flips, dives down past her feet. Was he? He was just tying his boot, right? Her face pales. She hears his words, romantic and sweet and so brave, as if her head were under water. The blood was pounding so loudly in her ears, her heart so hard in her chest, she distantly wondered if the avian could hear. Time slowed, sound stopped. Everything narrowed and focused in on the man before him and the beautiful ring he head to her. A million fears are warring in her mind. A million words are bouncing in the space, caught up in the gale of emotion that threatened to render her immobile. She might as well have been, as she sat still and unblinking before Irenic. She remembers how it felt the night she took his hand, the night he swept her into the star drenched sky and kept her safe in a world of unknown. She remembers sun-filled libraries and sandy beach afternoons. She remembers dusty, empty homes and hasty meals. She remembers running and running until they were sick from laughing when they should have been crying and hopeless. Time passes, Valrae doesn't feel it though. Suddenly, the blanket that was around her is falling in her wake. The witch throws herself at him, tears streaming down her face, and holds onto him like he might vanish again if she loosens her grip. With a single whisper she says, "Yes!"
Irenic chuckles through a wide grin when she practically tackles him to the ground. His free arm wraps around her securely and he allowed them to fall back onto the blanket and grass. “Had me worried a second there,” with her atop him his free hand takes the ring out of the box and chucks the box into the basket. Then he makes work of finding her left finger to slip the ring on it, “so… What is it that witches do to become betrothed?” He spoke softly so their conversation was still private, but keeping quiet wouldn’t matter soon as he effortlessly stands up with her still wrapped around him, “while you tell me, let's do a victory lap, yeah? Then we will come back here for some celebratory drinks... We should elope, I think.” It's only fitting for the pair. His mechanical wings were already preening and sort of fluttering with excitement, “I don’t think I can wait to make you mine.”