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CHAPTER ONE: I pray that my mind was good to me
There isn't a lot that she remembers of her mother.
There are flashes, a blurred face and a sweet voice that cooed in her ear in a language that she's found herself forgetting. Words that once were her one source of comfort having been conformed to stranger words and even stranger sounds. It fills her with an ache sometimes, a dull sort of thing in her chest, weighing her down by the bone when she thinks about her mother and her calloused hands and being unable to properly recall the sound of her voice, the curve of her smile, the shape of her eyes.
Keres often finds herself wondering as she stares at the reflection of herself, if she has traces of her mother in her, in the shape of her eyes, in the curve of her brow, in the slope of her neck. She wonders if it's something far subtler, like the lilt of her vowels, the way her mouth shapes the words or the turn of her lips.
Keres often finds herself wondering how much of her mother she holds in her, how much of the older woman's humanity is in her.
It's unbearable sometimes, the ache that the thought of her mother brings and she has found that nothing she has endured thus far comes even close to it, close to the heaviness in her chest, the crawl under her skin, the sting in her eyes.. Until.. until him
She often finds herself thinking of him, of the turquoise eyes and mass of black hair, of the calloused hands and barred neck and scarred body that was oh so easily given to her, left at her mercy. Of the lips that pressed against her, against her hands and the tips of her fingers despite knowing how they were stained red.
It is humiliating.
It's utterly and wholly humiliating, how often her mind wanders to him, to the memories tainted with shades of grief, of want, of this consuming, humiliating need to be there with him, her limbs tangled with his, breathing in the same airrather than the reds of rage and bitterness.
The memories come in full force, washing against her like a wave in a storm as she sits on the roof of a run-down building, staring down at the city below. She can hear echoes of gunshots, can feel the incessant tug in her to be closer, and knows the dull ache will slowly turn into something agonising.
Keres breathes in, her senses being overwhelmed with the sting of smoke. She can feel the hair in the back of her neck stand up, and can feel a crawl under her skin that can only be caused by one person.
"You're here." Keres stares at the mass of shadows curling into itself, her tone taking on a stiff note as she catches a flash of light and finds a blade at her throat, skin burning where the metal made contact.
