A new day greets the land. Birdsong fills the air with its mellow tune, from within the perches of trees and windows, away from the sun and the breeze. Warmth spills through the quilted curtains, illuminating the room with a lazy luster. A week’s end for most; a time to rest and recollect, to sleep the day away.
Xasne lies on her stomach under a blanket cocoon, warm and snug. Her crown of serpents cuddles together, each sporting a sleep mask and pillow of their own. Soft music serenades the room with its tender notes. The air is chilly, serving only to accent the surrounding warmth.
But despite it all, she is wide awake.
For beneath her, a giant sleeps. Rex, unaware of the woman grinning on his belly, snores the day away. Each breath is hungry; a mighty growl sucks in air with greed, only to free it in one long note. Drool drenches the pillow below him, glistening like some sick honey in the dimly lit. Occasionally, a hand would reach up to scratch his face or to swat a fly that isn’t there. But, nevertheless, he remains unmoving.
And yet, despite all his ugly, she continues to smile.
Perhaps it’s because he snorts in his sleep, and it makes her laugh. Maybe it’s since she can reach out and pluck an unlucky nose-hair from its home, and all he’d do is scrunch his face up, sniffle and cry, never once escaping rest. Probably by the hints of a stubble growing, making him appear nice and gruff.
It’s definitely because he looks so at peace; in a pleasant dream of his own design.
A wild contrast to ten years ago, when rest like this is but a daydream that spells death. She remembers him, tall and stoic, clad in steel as indomitable as his will. His smoldering gaze. Such conviction in his eyes. Her grin widens at the memories; at the silent warpath he made, and them following close behind; at his body and spirit, undeterred by many a wound; at his art, and the dance of death they made together.
Only one thing refused to change. A trait only she knows.
Contrasting his cold appearance, the warmth he gives off is like no other. Her chest swells with pride as the one he devotes this untapped well of love to, even with the shortcomings of his attempts to make it known. It feels ripped right out of a book and fills her stomach with butterflies; the hardened veteran, a shell to hide the sweet and cuddly underneath, opens up only when they’re alone. The way his face, scarred and scary as it was, tries its best to smile in her presence, sends her heart leaping.
Her breathing deepens, a deep blush forming on her cheeks. The sweet thoughts are too much for the pipsqueak to take. Her thoughts plunge deep into the rabbit hole of romance. Excitement rises at what has been, what is, and will be, hands balling into fists as energy fills her very soul. In need of an outlet, she lets out a squeal of joy, burying her face and slamming her fists into the bed underneath.
Wait.
“Hammer of God-”
Rex screams from the pain of his chest caving in, a hand instinctively shooting up to grab the thing off and out the window.
Unbeknownst to him as he checks for wounds, the object he sends crashing face-first into the glass and onto the garden two stories below was not a weapon he had grown to remember, but the very woman he was dreaming of having lunch with.
