Open Vulpinsula & Surroundings The Changes Upon Us

[Talinn Ryalor]

Talinn paced around nervously as he waited for his wife. They had started their process of reconciliation, slowly but surely, but things were still a bit new, and raw. He knew, of course, it would take a while to repair what had been broken, little by little. When one smashed a glass vase, one had to pick up the glass, and inevitably get cut in the process. He was still in the process of picking that up, before he could begin to piece it back together in the manner of his homeland, kintsugi, it was called. Just like he had repaired his family’s fall from power, he would fix their marriage, and then, hopefully, do what he could to do so with his children. It would just be extremely painful to do so.

Is that not what the Kitsune said, nothing without a price?

As she came in, he saw her laugh and smirk, and his first instinct was to turn around and say something to the affect of “fine then, leave!”, but, after a few breaths, he realized it was the first time in a long time Dusk had genuinely laughed in his presence. Something of the younger, intelligent, beautiful vixen he had married and enjoyed time with before things had gotten so...complicated. It always was.

My pride is not worth hurting her, not after I have already done so much. It’s something I wish you had understood more in life, Uncle. Pride was what killed you in the end, even if I were the instrument. Pride that I have to swallow if I am to secure a safe future for my family.

“Is it truly so bad?” He asked, a little sullen at her reaction nonetheless. “I could always have my personal stylist cut it again like always, but...I am tired, Dusk.” He moved over to sit down on the chair before the mirror, glancing at himself. “It takes effort to go against the grain, and such little things...are they worth the effort, when I could save the energy for greater pursuits...and battles…”

The summons will be coming any day now.

@Dusk Rainblade

 

[Dusk Rainblade]

Dusk felt her smile die away, her face falling into sympathetic worry as she stepped forward to stand behind Talinn's chair. She leaned down, embracing him from over his shoulders like she used to do when they were younger. She recalled so many times when he'd been up late into the night working on his reports, and she'd playfully distracted him that way until he came to bed. She didn't have to wonder what had happened to make them this way; she knew immediately. Still, she wondered if that was her pride keeping her stubbornly in the past as much as Talinn's pride haunted him now. It had hurt her pride so deeply, that her husband would do what he did. It felt like I wasn't enough, she reflected at long last, finally willing to introspect after a decade of willfully holding to her hatred of the todd. I felt that, if I were enough for him, he would never have said yes to her.

That was the pain that clawed at her from within, gnawing upon her soul: the insecurity, the same one that had put her at odds with Tanya for so long. She'd tried to steal away Falun, steal Marie, steal her father's attention back... And yes, if she was being honest, she'd stolen Talinn too, though that was the one secret she would take to her grave, if only because all of the guilt Talinn held would displace upon her with the fury of a thousand suns. Still, for those twenty years he'd been hers and hers alone, and she'd given him the best of herself, her talents, wit, and intellect, not to mention four kits.

Five. She paused in stroking her paw down his chest as that ugly thought resurfaced. They hadn't talked about it since the opera house; it lay festering between them, an open wound that neither would touch lest something ugly come oozing out. She'd spent weeks rehearsing her justifications, practicing it upon Thistle and Kaii, preparing herself to have her shame laid bare between them. Even now, she still didn't feel ready for it.

She gently kissed her husband's cheek, fluffier than it normally was. "You don't have to keep hiding yourself, shaping yourself into what you aren't," she murmured in his ear. "You keep trying to make yourself someone else - Falun, Alexei, I don't know, but it's not you. At least, not the you that I get to see. Maybe instead of trimming it all away, you could just let yourself be for once."