the way i do
Lady Lora's arms are so strong, so close, so warm, despite every bit of chilling airstream sweeping across Turqos Plateau at just about head height (likely resulting from lazy buffets over and around Flying Fortress Desmor's ever-spread wings; the danger is never completely gone, but they do not cower in the realm of it).
Haze doesn't think she's ever felt this happy before. Everything seems to have fallen into place, order from the chaos that was their humble beginnings, prestige only equal with what they are due, resources and resilience to keep going, on and on and on.
Even, she doesn't think, can hardly believe, she'll ever feel this happy again. It's a sharp doubt, prickling and ugly, and it must have gotten to her somewhere above where her legs are so peacefully folded into Lora's embrace, because she's sure there's no way such a horrid thing, such a shameful thought, could have reached her where her lady's there to guard.
They have to win, they have to defeat Malos, she knows this above all, and she's not even really worried about it. There are so many of their friends backing Lady Lora - as if she's the one in the lead, and not Master Addam and Lady Mythra, but all the same...
Oh, she can't help but see her own lady as the brave heroine, defeating evil and scoring grand victories for the common folk. She's always there, very figure so glorious, running the fastest of them all (Haze can hardly keep up, but she loves, she loves, she loves the impossible opportunity to try).
Lora shifts underneath her, redistributing their weight and digging the rigid cuff of her boot out of the back of her thigh. Unbothered, Haze preens like the happiest little chick, and if she weren't so busy holding on - she's got to make it as easy as possible for Lady Lora to carry her, or else she'll just be dead weight! - she'd lift a hand to the warm, ruddy cheek and caress it with a gentler, kinder breeze.
Haze likes to be common folk. She loves the idea that someday they'll build a little house in the woods and bake bread all day and weave blankets all night and care for children who've lost their way, and never have a worry in the world about anyone expects of them.
If she cared about what people expected, then she'd still be lagging behind Jin, waiting her turn instead of grasping at the divine promise that seems so readily laid out before her.
"Are you alright, Haze?"
Lady Lora sounds genuinely worried, as if anything could possibly have gone wrong when they're together. Still, Haze notices the beginnings of a frown bunching impatiently at the corners of her lips - her own, that is, but she recognizes it because when Lora frowns she can always practically feel it.
It doesn't feel good.
"Just thinking, my lady," she answers, serene as anything. Oh, if only every day could be like this, always. There's nothing better she'd like to think about, even if it is sad (melancholy, Master Minoth would say) sometimes.
"Oh? That's not like you."
Is she teasing? Now Haze does let go, only briefly, to brush wayward strands of earthy red hair out of her lady's eyes.
Always her lady. Never anything else - never anyone else's, she even lets herself think for one possessive moment, and that's as it should be - and never better, never better, never better.
"Everybody's always thinking, my lady," Haze answers again, this time curling the epithet less like she's winding coy fingers through spiraling tresses and more like she's roundly nodding without once moving her head.
"Are you worried about something?" comes the next query, the lean on the pronoun accompanied by a lean against a shoulder still covered in pauldrons and decorum. Lora fields it (yields)...not quite in stride.
She looks away, far past Haze's foreground, past the mid, into the distance. The future is so close, volatile, there.
"Lady Lora, look at me."
She's doubting herself. Can she really be the knight, the good lady, everyone expects her to be, even believes her to be? Can she really rise above the people she came from, and make a name for herself that isn't synonymous with mercenaries and thieves?
She's still a simple woman, at heart. It might not even be possible for her to forget who she is, as far as honor goes, but then as dishonor and doubt...
Maybe it's a selfish, self-aggrandizing thought, but Haze is sure that if she only looks, only sees herself in the swimming reflection of a golden mirror reaching out for her, calling, calling, calling...that she'll be found.
Lady Lora will never know what it's like to be loved by someone like her. Haze knows, she can try all she wants, but she'll never be...
Lora looks. She smiles. It's a goofy grin, endearing like nothing else in this world, and Haze finds herself matching it as if she was born to, as if she was made to, as if the halo really has made her a guardian angel set forth upon Alrest for one love and one love alone.
The wind stops. They can hear each other and each other's breathing.
They are in love. They are at peace.