A Game of Hearts (RP Excerpt)

Marron

A pair of ember eyes peered up from the surface of the water. They watched her. A watching game. He was getting good at those.

Then, as the minutes dragged by and it was very clear that he had won, Marron paddled closer in the shallows, submerged up to his nose with his limbs splayed out behind him. A frog with hooves.

He touched her knees.
“Boo?”

Tris

Tris jolted upright with a shock of surprise, a reflexive golden pulse pushing a great ripple across the water in all directions. She stared down at the red eyes in front of her, the runes splayed out like a rug, and for another few seconds she just held her startled posture.

Her antennae flicked upright and she feigned nonchalance. “Took you long enough.”

Marron

“You were waiting for me? That is very sweet,” giggled Marron. He hauled himself onto his rump beside her, wrapped his tail around his hooves, and waited some more. An expectant, flickering glance. An unwavering smile. 

“What is wrong?”

Tris

She relaxed back onto her heels and dug pointed toes deeper into the sand. That wasn’t the question she’d expected. Not because she doubted Marron’s ability to pick up on her moods, but because she’d made a show of thwarting his game.
And he didn’t care.

He asked an honest question, so she gave an honest answer. “I don’t know,” she said. She glanced down at her hands and fiddled with jingling bracelets. “I don’t know what’s wrong, or what’s right. Once I was so sure. But I lost my footing, and it was a long way to the ground…”

Tris raised her head and offered a rueful smile. She patted her knees, planted in the water with her feet tucked under the damp folds of her skirt. “I may have lost both my legs this time. I’m stuck.”

Marron

Marron listened, with perhaps surprising patience, until she was finished. Then, a sage nod. Still smiling. He lay his cheek on his arms. “It’s awfully hard to walk without legs. Is it the wrong that’s got you stuck, or the right?” he asked.

Tris

Tris hesitated at that.

Perfect love. The right. The unreachable aspiration— opposed to selfish lust. The wrong. Destructive in the most foul way.

“I want the rightness,” she answered. “But the wanting always just makes it wrong...”

Marron

“There is nothing wrong with wanting,” Marron answered simply, and without hesitation, this time. “Why live, otherwise?”

Tris

“That’s not true.”

Her smile vanished, eyes tight. “When you want it badly enough, it poisons you. It beats down your senses one by one until it’s all you can taste. And if you lose it… there’s nothing left.” She dug her toes deeper into the sand. “You’re stuck.”

Marron

“That is not the fault of wanting. That is the fault of losing. They’re very different.”

A pause.

“Have you lost?”

You can read the full RP HERE!