Welcome to Gaia! ::

Selfish. That was how she felt, as well. She felt infinitely selfish for laughing, and smiling, and wanting, and needing, and desiring. She felt her frail, broken heart, still lying in tatters in her chest. She felt it, and knew it was raw from losing Herryk, but it still beat, hot and strong. It still demanded attention. Even as broken as it was, it still wanted to feel.

Freya let out a sigh of sheer disbelief at how non-judgmental Kettil was. How was he real? How did he not violently hate her past, or even the fact that her heart was still aching over another? He was a boil, boils couldn't do these things.

She reached out for Kettil's hand. She couldn't see it, so she couldn't grab it herself, but her hand clenched as if asking for it. When she was given it, she pulled it right to her chest, and held it there.

Then she let herself grieve.

"He did. He made me smile all the time. He was so good teh me. I thinks, before I knows him, I believes all boils just wanted teh use me. I never believes anyone could loves me. He proves me wrong. He makes me sees everything differently.

Tears trickled down from her eyes, falling down the side of her face.

"I don't know why this happens, Hooter. I don't know what changed. But it hurts." Her hand squeezed his tightly, and her heart stuttered. "It hurts so much."

One day, when she looked back at all of this, she would wonder at the patience and understanding the boil had for her. At that moment, she couldn't even fathom it. It made her head ache with disbelief.

She looked up at him, and sucked in a shallow, stuttering breath.

He looked like a fallen angel.

She pinched her face up, let the tears fall even as he watched, and just nodded. Both of her hands reached up and pressed against the features of his face gently. They touched his nose, and his cheeks. They brushed across his lips, and buried themselves in his hair.

They stuck there, and she tried to get through it, only to get stuck further. Through her tears, she let out an embarrassed laugh.

"I'm stuck on yeh."

Freya's eyes slit, but her expression remained amused. She watched with great interest as he started to pull her hands carefully out of his hair, without moving them herself. She never touched his dreads before - maybe she'd been scared they'd come out. She didn't understand them, and she didn't want to mess with them. But most of all, running her hands through his hair would have been too intimate. Too touchy. It was something she would have never done before. And now that her instincts led her into his hair.. she was starting to figure out that she should probably stay out.

"I don't gets them, yeh knows. Yeh tries teh explains them once but I still don't gets it. I know is yehr own hairs, it just, how can that be hair?" He finally freed her, and kissed her knuckles. She couldn't help the soft sigh that left her at the gesture.

She never knew how romantic he could be. He'd always been so good, so careful not to push their boundaries. It was why he was her very best friend.

And he still was.

Just..

Her hand turned around in his, until she held control. She pulled his knuckles down to her lips, but her eyes stayed focused very carefully on him, watching. She gave him the same gesture, kissing his knuckles, before breathing a word against them.

"Thanks."

It was kind of disturbing. Here she was, listening to him talk about Lark, and the little things that made her special to him. She watched his eyes change when he thought of her, and the way his face brightened when he realized he could think about her without crying. She should have been jealous. And when she thought about it, she was, a little. But more, much more than that, her heart thudded with an overwhelming sense of content. She loved how open he was. She loved how they lay there, lying together once more, talking about nothing less than the people they had just broken up with, and reminisced fondly.

No anger. No bitterness. No jealousy.

She didn't know what to think.

She grinned when his cheeks blushed, and she reached out to pinch one. "No, I gets why yeh did it. I just never understoods how they worked. And I still don't, because yeh stills not tells me! How in Odin's name is THAT real hair?"

She brushed her hands along the top of them, refusing to slide her fingers in for fear of getting stuck again. This would be difficult..

"How does they works?"

Freya touched the hair as he spoke, trying to understand it. One of the dreads fell down over his face as she disturbed it, and her fingers moved to rub down its length, curving around and following the flow of the hair inside of it. "What is the methods to keeps it this way? What does yeh puts in it?"

Her other hand rose up and rested on his cheek, but only to serve to bring him closer. Her eyes remained locked with curiosity on the dread. She wanted to get a closer look.

She couldn't imagine Kettil without his dreads. She literally couldn't actually picture it. She tried. Her eyes returned to him, and squinted with effort. The tip of her tongue jutted out of her lips as she bit down on it while she tried to picture him with normal hair.

Nope. Her brain just couldn't do it. She turned her attention back to the dread, and started picking at the bottom, pulling it right up to her eyes to stare into it.

"I don't thinks yeh'd look weird. But I don't knows for sure. I can't sees it." Her eyes brightened mischievously as she looked up at him, crinkling her nose at the kiss. "Maybe we can puts a wig on yeh! Sees what yeh looks like. Or maybe.."

She bent forward, just slightly, and pulled all of her hair out from behind her. Then she draped it as best as she could over his head, moving locks around to try and cover his own dreads completely in her hair.

Her smile dropped, as did her jaw, and she stared for a few moments while her hair slowly fell away from his head. Then she shook herself out of her stupor and laughed.

"You can undo this? Like, like.."

She literally tried to pick up the dread she'd been playing with and unfurl it. Nothing happened.

"Ohhh." She breathed out in understanding. "Is it magics?"