arahir:

a lot of people requested this!! i hope it satisfies a little.

krolia comes to a realization | 1.5k

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“Shiro and I went camping, once,” Keith says quietly.

He’s always quiet. He was when he was born. Good natured, they’d said, so full of hope and all good things because he was healthy and strong. Krolia has regretted leaving him every day since. More, now. More, because he was alone. It’s a dual pain: a love lost and her child adrift. The revelation tore something out of her that taken months to heal over to a bearable pain.

Keith pushes at a log with the long stick he was using to tease the wolf earlier. He’s smiling with that soft-eyed look he gets. He was a beautiful child; he’s more beautiful now. She pictured it a thousand nights, trying to shape the way his jaw would grow and who he would take after more, and it was like trying to imagine color sightless. “He tried to teach me how to make a fire. But he sucked at it,” Keith laughs to himself. “He set his jacket on fire.”

Krolia finds a smile tugging at her mouth.

“I’m glad you had friends.”

Keith looks down and smiles and there’s red over his high cheekbones, a little dusting of it that’s so rare and so telling.

“A friend,” he says to himself.

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