Title: Waiting
Character(s): Guaraha, Meru
Summary: Guaraha watches the gate, waiting.
A/N: Can't say I'm sure how it turned out all together in the mind of another, as this was done little by little over the course of maybe a year, and mostly while I was half asleep. But people tell me I write better when I'm half asleep, so... whatever the case may be... here it is.
He recalls, with astounding clarity, the exact moment that he met her. He was seven, and she was four, with a long shock of blue-platinum hair and a smile that seemed to light up the otherwise dismal forest. Her eyes, oddly, were pink rather than the vibrant scarlet of most winglies. He remembers thinking something about blood and water, and that he had stared at her strangely for a few moments.
She perked up and said, "Whatcha doin'?"
And, intrigued, he entertained her for the day. Then the next and the next and…
-:-:-
She was peeking at the gate with a thoughtful frown on her face, arms crossed and eyes narrowed. Thick, gray-green leaves hung heavily from winding branches in front of her, obscuring her from the view of the watcher. She must have been standing there for hours, unseen, and mindful of this he approached her quietly in an attempt to not break her cover.
"What are you doing?" he whispered.
She spun around wildly, snapping piles of twigs and grinding pebbles against each other discordantly as she lost her balance and tumbled backwards.. "Guaraha!" she yelped, loudly.
He sighed and tugged her back to town just as the guard began shouting at them.
-:-:-
"I want to be a dancer!" she announced one day.
They were sitting by the water, watching little fish dart to and fro. It was the end of the day, but the forest was only slightly darker for it. He looked at her when she spoke and, seeing how determined and relatively serious she looked, he couldn't help but laugh. She looked mildly affronted, ready to stand up and tower over him and demand to know what he found so amusing.
He told her to just stay sitting so she didn't fall in the pond.
She pouted.
Then slipped.
In the end he fished her out (a task made difficult by her flailing arms and kicking legs) and dragged her home, sopping wet and irritated. The lecture he received from her mother for allowing her to fall rang in his ears for hours afterward. And he had to mop their floor.
He wouldn't let her near the water again for some time after that.
-:-:-
She was sitting atop some rocks, frowning thoughtfully at the gates below. The watcher was there, slacking off like usual. Paying attention only when someone made some obvious movement. The expression on her pretty face was so intense that it gave him pause, and he stood there hesitantly behind a tree, just watching her.
Eventually she turned to him and said, "I really wonder what the rest of the world is like."
He shook his head at her. "We're not allowed out of the forest and you know it."
"Why not!?" she burst, "It's not fair! There's a whole world out there…" she trailed off and looked towards the gate again, whimsical.
He scolded her slightly for her words, and regretted it later, when he found her room emptied of her most precious belongings and her mother listless at the kitchen table. They said she was gone. He went to the gate.
She wasn't there.
No good-bye and no warning other than a sudden outburst that quickly died.
He went to the gate again later.
She hadn't come back yet.
And again he went the next day.
And she wasn't there.
He signed up for guard duty, and the one before him was happy to relinquish the position. He watched more avidly than any of the previous guards, so they let him be, though they knew—
He was only waiting for Meru.