07/08/11
He stretched out atop the frozen leaves of the forest, eyes peering through a canopy of branches, seeking out the stars that seemed innumerable here, so far away from civilization. It reminded him of the Burrow, to see the world this way... though he felt detached from it. He couldn't know truths beyond these branches and the quest he'd returned to complete with them. Here, he shivered in the night, no lovingly knitted woolen to cut through the cold. Yet all of these things, what should have made him homesick, which had done so before, now served only to make him feel that much more at home. Especially when he heard her sigh from somewhere just behind him, inside their tent. Especially when he felt her close as she stomped out, circling round their clearing, twirling her wand between her fingers. Especially when she paused to glance in his direction and he pretended not to see her there, biting his lip and holding his breath in case she actually spoke to him. And this time, she stood hovering there for far too long, much longer than she'd dared before. Was she forgiving him? Slowly? His heart beat a painful rhythm as he waited... if only for her just to scold him for lying on the ground when he should be inside sleeping in his bunk, preparing for his watch. He'd taken second shift, over and over, tiny glimpses of his reparations. But still, they remained frozen in time, his body and hers, the closeness yet too distant. And he exhaled as she moved. Not yet. But soon. And he grinned once more for possibility.