Work Text:
He rises above the ground, fast and unsteady but no less defiant. The wind plays with his hair and his face is reshaped by its hands, cradling his expression the more he rises until his attempt at annoyance is smoothed into content, molded like the clay she watches artisan’s hold in their calloused hands. Similarly, his personality has started to morph in the past few weeks, and now that he flies Nahida can see it in the smoothed crease of his perpetually wrinkled brow.
(“Anger has settled deep within the creases” she’d told him once, when the impulse of poking at his furrowed brow had taken hold until she could hardly control her own limbs. (This was only three weeks since he had tried to end her. For all her wisdom, Nahida often finds herself asking the night if her heart really plays at the same level as her mind, or if it muddles it.)
He’d recoiled at her aborted touch, as if she also possessed his mother's electricity.
“What the hell-” he’d muttered, the creases darkening further. A frown had taken over her own face.
"I just worry the anger may never leave” Nahida said in lieu of a real answer, hand now resting against her side in a small fist.
“Good” he’d responded back, and the vicious face he’d shown her then hadn’t given her much hope. )
But now the creases have lightened and although Nahida can still see the shadow of anger trying to cling between the valley’s, it’s not as prominent as in those first weeks.
She watches as he starts to gain control of the tide of the winds, flows with it instead of against, starts to seem confident in his new found ability.
"Be careful!” she calls up at him. Nahida can almost feel the thrum of freedom in her own blood, the touch of gentle, windy hands against her cheekbones. How fun it would be to experience it fully with him.
He turns to look at her and tries to scowl, but it looks faint and halfhearted, like the wind has taken away the muscles intended for unhappy expressions.
Nahida smiles up at him, with teeth and dimples showing. He looks away and the faint brush of something quick and vulnerable in his eyes lights his face under the sun.
One day she hopes he finds peace with her guidance, like the wind seems to give when he flies.