yush! and I hope I am worth the wait! :o
Their arboreal halcyon was the most beautiful place that she could have imagined. The soft, sensual leaves brushing against their fur; the heavy drifting scent of the ripened fruit, adding splashes of color all around them; the occasional wind whispering sweet nothings to their souls. Anu brought out the best in nature, her very presence a catalyst to make the flowers bloom and the grass sing around her. As her captivating voice broke the stillness, Coli drank in every word, listening without a sound in return. She would not dream of interrupting such a symphony. She was surprised, though, to learn another tidbit of her lover's mysterious past - she had left another pack...? Who would ever let her slip through their fingers?
Her breath caught in her throat, keenly aware of Anu's fingertips hovering above her sensitive skin, brushing loose strands of her silken mane from obscuring her wide blue eyes. She started to subconsciously lean in towards her warm touch, but quickly caught herself before the tiny gesture gave her away. How she longed to be held.
"I... I... do you believe in angels?" she asked suddenly, shuffling her footpaws sheepishly. It was not the smoothest non sequitur, but nothing that came from her lips ever was, not when she was frazzled by Anu's cool grace. Anu had always seemed otherworldly, heavenly, and even knowing her down-to-earth roots did not dispel the notion.
But Coli wasn't referring to that romantic notion; it was the best way she could think of to bridge the topic she had dreaded. She couldn't just dance around it forever, the guilt would eat her alive. And if it drove her to repeat the mistake, well, that would be unthinkable. No, she had to pay the green-eyed angel back in some way; her memory of that night was dizzying and patchy, but she could remember his voice, and he had urged her to find a reason to keep on living. "In... in the pack my m-mother was from... they believed in a lot of things. Religion, angels and demons, that stuff... they taught it to me when I was little." Before they dumped me.
Colibri glanced curiously up to the gentle features of the woman she had come to love, come to associate with hope itself. "Most of it seems rather silly now," she admitted, ears falling back as she smiled in embarrassment. She hadn't met anyone else who knew or cared about religion. She never entirely understood why it had meant so much to her maternal relatives, why it made her a 'child of sin'. She hadn't done anything wrong, but perhaps they had been right all along. If her father was a demon, she could hardly escape his shadow. Not without the help of saviors, anyway. Ohh, Anu would laugh at her if she ever explained how highly she thought of the Dreamer! A pure-hearted soul, a spirit of nature, a divine beauty.
"But, anyway... I th-think... I might have actually met one...?" her voice trailed off into a question, guilt creeping into her expressive countenance. He must have saved her to make Anu happy. If only she was capable of that. Wouldn't Anu be happier not knowing? This was a bad idea, she shouldn't finish the story, it wouldn't end well. Nervously, she plucked a leaf from the apple twigs, folding the thin membrane over and over between her pawpads. She should work on not blurting things out so often. She couldn't ruin this.