[PRP] Seeking Solace (Bukichi + Aryale)

[demon_pachabel]

If the raise of her brows could have been the only answer that Aryale gave to that question, she'd have left it at that look. Instead, she pat the bed next to her and waited for him to take a seat.

Then, she reached out and firmly cupped his chin in both of her hands - a clear show that if he tried to look down or away from her that she'd force him back up. "A single finger doesn't make or break a dragonrider. The wholeness of the spirit and heart will take you farther ahead than this can drag you back. You still have every chance in the world." He had a strangely sensitive heart, really. One that was eager to prove itself. One that shrank in the shadow of a looming brother. He stood in the same shadow that she herself cast upon her own siblings.

Tsunake

 

[Tsunake]

He moved slowly, cautiously, easing his weight down onto the bed beside her. He turned his head to allow her to touch his face, leaning into one of her hands as he studied her expression. Her words were reassuring, in part... but he wondered if she was just telling him what he wanted to hear. "I guess it doesn't." Bukichi said after a moment. He could build up strength again in that hand. It might never be as strong as it had originally been, but he could do his best to ensure it wasn't a weakness.

"Sometimes I just worry that I'm not enough." He confessed to her, the only person here that he felt that he could bare his vulnerabilities to.

demon_pachabel

 

[demon_pachabel]

She frowned. Not with disappointment or even pity, but like something had bottled thoughtfulness and concern together and shaken it until it was impossible to tell where one ended and another began.

Had she not been the same before Yaguareth had settled against everything she was and calmed that desperation? Was that not why she wanted that for him?

"What is it you want to be enough for? Enough to be?" She knew the answer, but she asked anyways. "Because being here means you are enough to be a dragonrider. What else?"

Tsunake

 

[Tsunake]

There was a pregnant pause while he turned the question over in his mind, weighing it carefully. "Yes." He said slowly. "Sometimes I feel like I've made progress in accepting myself as I am, but other times, it simply feels like my priority of worth has shifted. Instead of my father's praise and what should have been mine, now it comes down to Impressing a dragon."

Bukichi clenched his jaw for a moment, exhaled, then continued. "Part of me fears that being Searched but never becoming a rider just proves I'm second best. I have potential, but just not quite enough."

His lips quirked upward in a humorless smile. "It's pathetic. But I still feel that way."

demon_pachabel

 

[demon_pachabel]

"You're not pathetic," Aryale's frown deepened. If she'd been able to physically reach out and swat away those feelings of inadequacy in his mind, she would have. "Lost, at best. But..." she dropped a hand to trace over the freshly treated knuckle of his lost finger. "Take this as meaning that thread of your father in you has snapped. There are so many things to tie to the other end. You're not a thief and you're not a dragonrider." And now one of those poles had snapped with the fishing line to sever that balancing act.

"You are strong, stubborn, and capable. You could have dropped the fight at any time, but you've scrambled to be here with tenacity that most people never have to find. That I shouldn't have had to." That had pulled a dragon to her because it had been tested. "There is no race, only a climb that you're already capable of making. Of continuing to make."

Tsunake