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“Hold still.” Phoebe says as the featherlight touch of her fingers kisses the roughness of her horns; “Just for a bit, it won’t take too long.”
Zani does as she orders her to, tail wrapping around her waist for safekeeping measures. Phoebe’s slotted between her thighs, kneeling on the patch of dewy grass as she pats something down onto her head; something brittle and ticklish and light that she can’t quite put a finger on what it is with her head spinning in a daze from the lack of distance.
They’re close in ways more than one. Right now it's physical, but in the sense of relationships even beyond now—in both categories, maybe they were a little too close for comfort.
It’s not like she’s not used to it, to be in a situation where she’s so near another human being that she could hear her everytime she takes a breath and everytime she pushes it out. She’d come from a dark place where light was out of reach, a place that needed her to be on guard at all times exactly because of the fact that proximity was a surefire reason to lead to death—any type of closeness was often a closeness that goes past her comfort zone.
Every other scar on her body has been made out of an intent to harm her, brand a permanent reminder that she hadn’t been good enough to prevent a strike—it had to come from somewhere, had to be done by someone who managed to get close enough to her to land a hit in the first place.
Nonetheless, it should be unquestionably ordinary, she thinks, to have a brush of skin against her forehead, to have another reminder that she’s still alive up to this day when she can hear another heartbeat from someone she’d let into her abnormally normal life sounding out after her own.
(But it’s not exactly ordinary, not when she feels her throat drying up with Phoebe so close to her person, not when no one else but Phoebe can get her in such a state.
Maybe it’s the fact that this closeness came out of a fondness for her wellbeing that makes her feel a nervousness that she’s never felt before, something that not even unfamiliarity can explain when they’ve become acquainted with each other over the weeks: one that sends blood running everywhere around her body and has her looking away out of shame, not wanting Phoebe to see the redness casted like a veil over her face.
The tickling sensation of what she thinks is a stray leaf against her ears did not have that same intent of harm, did not carry even a slight of vengeance to be used to make her bleed away through another scar. It makes her hairs stand on end in anticipation—her being waiting almost impatiently for another order from the woman in front of her to lay the one she’s under now to rest.)
It’s only when Phoebe has long entwined a crown of flowers around her horns that she’s able to register the weight on her head that’s barely there: a plentiful garden of sword acorus blooms resting lightly between the silvery threads of her hair.
“There we go!” Phoebe exclaims, her dulcet voice bringing Zani back to her senses as she lowers her body down to meet her gaze, grass shifting as they welcome her changing posture in comfort, “I hope it’s to your liking, Miss Zani.”
Her charcoal gloved fingers scramble to pinch onto the bundles of flora that hang off the corners of her head. The lingering scents of lavender blue and vanilla wafting above her isn’t something she’s unfamiliar to, having once received a bouquet of them to commemorate the first time she achieved the title of ‘Best Employee’ that its fragrance was no longer a stranger to her nose.
But it’s not like she can see it from this angle, this crown that’s been placed on her head that must have taken some minutes of precious effort to twine into existence. Her eyes can’t stretch far enough to see anything past just a single bloom that dangles just above her forehead, she’ll have to wait until she comes upon a mirror, maybe open up her pocket watch and squint until she can find the barest of reflections that could give her a glimpse of the crown in the first place.
And yet.
A thought continues above all, lingering around since the moment she’d felt that there was something Phoebe wanted to give her with the jittery way her hands grasped hold onto the crown that she’d then desperately tried to hide behind her back: Zani hasn’t really done anything to deserve such a lovely gift in the first place.
“As much as I appreciate the gesture, I don’t think I did anything that needed something like this in return.” Zani comments with the most delighted tone she can muster, unwanting to make it seem like she was nothing but grateful, casually shifting it over to the inquiry that’s still floating over her mind; “Did I win a secret contest the Order designed or something, Miss Acolyte? Was it a contest on ‘most prolific non-believer of the year that her banishment will send RInascita into a panic’?”
A high-pitched giggle escapes the believer in front of her, the corners of her eyes crinkling in as she wheezes at her joke. Phoebe swats a hand noncommittally, shaking her head as she speaks.
“Goodness, Miss Zani.” Her name spills out of Phoebe’s mouth laced with nothing but fondness, a clear three-sixty to the sometimes nonchalance and most-of-the-time worry she’s always heard being associated with her name no thanks to the position she holds within her job. It nearly, barely, makes Zani jump within her seat and her tail flaps gently against Phoebe’s stomach, still tied around her waist. “No, there’s no such competition—I just wanted to thank you.”
Except that there’s nothing she’s done that’s needed to be thanked for, Zani thinks as her mouth opens to say something in its regards, but it’s not like Phoebe would step down so easily even if she objected to it like so. It’s not like Phoebe didn’t spare minutes of her day to make this for her, lithe fingers risking thorncuts that would have left her perfectly nimble fingers unfree of scars just to make her something so beautiful with such a fleetingly impermanent shelf life.
Her mouth closes back down as she acquiesces for her to keep going, and Phoebe twiddles her thumbs as she looks past her, eyes gazing downwards to the Codex she’d let rest against the meadow below their feet.
“Brenno and Livia made a crown similar to this for me when they found out what happened with the Tidebreaker.” Phoebe explains tenderly, effervescent voice tinged with a somber warmth that has never ceased whenever she talks of her little friends, “Said something about me needing a crown of my own since I’d protected Ragunna with my wellbeing on the line, and such a task was something so noble that I should be given one for it.”
Zani finds a breath stuck in her throat, understanding just where this was going next; “Indeed, I think they’re very right.” she agrees, masking the slightness of a cracked nerve that’s starting to invade her composure—the thought that she was held so highly in Phoebe’s eyes makes her feel something, she can’t quite pin a name on it but it’s certainly there; “You stood bravely that day, Phoebe. The Acolytes should’ve commended you for your quick initiative.”
“Well, I have my own reservations regarding it.” goes Phoebe because what she’s done is anything but noble in her eyes—it’s something expected of her by her gospel, something she expects of herself when she holds the duties of preserving the land she cherishes so dearly to her heart in the name of her Lord.
It’s that part of her that she wishes Phoebe would cast away from time to time—that part that screams to her that everything she’s doing does not deserve the same praise she so deftly gives to others without stopping for a second to take a breather and allow her that same thought; that she’s done more than she should, that she shouldn’t feel like she’s responsible for the burden of many and she always has the choice to cease her service even if the world hasn’t found itself at peace.
Maybe Phoebe would turn that back on her too—that she’s just the same, in some ways, that she doesn’t have the privilege to say these things to her when Zani suffers just the same problem of autonomy as she does at times.
Regardless.
Phoebe doesn’t hold those same reservations for her, and she ends it with the intent to make sure she knows just as much.
“It took me some time to find enough acoruses to make this, forgive me for my lateness.” Phoebe’s hands reach up once again to brush away the bangs covering her forehead, fingers warm and gentle to the touch as she scrapes against her skin, “But I’d thought that if there’s anyone who deserves such a crown for her actions, it would be you.”
Phoebe smiles, beaming at her once again with a radiance that she can’t possibly shoot down and every hint of a refusal bubbles down in an instant.
Zani’s own hand lifts up to grasp one of the blooms gently between the pads of her fingers and press against their textures, imagining a vision of her intently weaving with devotion under the moonlit nights. If she herself said that Phoebe deserved an accolade in the form of a crown for her steadiness that day, and if she too stood beside her on that same day—wouldn’t she just be going back on her word?
Phoebe had taken the time to make this for her, even though she didn’t have to. Phoebe had specifically gone out of her way to find flowers that matched her likes when she could have so easily used the easy way out and grab whatever matched her own fancy, Phoebe could have just bought one outright.
She could have, but she didn’t.
Her brightness infects her just as it always has, a smile creeping up onto the fixtures of her mouth.
“Thank you, Phoebe.” Zani says and she means it with all her heart, the smile twisting the corners of her mouth says just as much. Her tail wags softly against Phoebe’s stomach, skittering around with every intention to make it known that she likes what she’d been given even if the full form of the gift is something she’s yet to see in its whole glory, she does; “I can’t really see what it looks like right now—but since it’s coming from you, I have no doubt that it’s as lovely and as beautiful as the cute Acolyte who made it in the first place.”
It hadn’t been her intention to fluster her, despite the masses of bantering they shared in between meetings that often ended in either one of them a mess of hues ranging from cerise pink to maroon red—Zani had said this because it’s true; she had no doubt that the gift laying on top of her head could be described as anything but pleasant to the eyes, just as how the world manages to get a little more brighter every time she sees Phoebe prattle along the streets to play with the children between her shifts as she walks to Margherita’s down by Mercurio’s aisle.
Still.
Phoebe only stares at her at first, caught off-guard from her compliment, gauging her face to see if that lazy smirk of hers that pops up all so breezily without halt whenever she’s trying to fluster her had lagged in its appearance. When she realizes that Zani had meant what she said, had said it without the aim to make her stumble in her tracks—the redness that creeps up into her face had almost sent her backwards, only being saved by her tail that hasn’t released its hold on her all this time.
“S–sorry, I forgot about that.” she fidgets surreptitiously, fumbling to take her staff to create a mirror out of thin air so that Zani can finally catch a glimpse of her gift; “H–here, do you like it, Miss Zani?”
What she means by it is this: of the crown of flowers now sitting on her head, of all the pretty little blooms and its petals that dot a pleasant softness into her exhausted complexion eaten away at through countless long nights due to continuous sessions of overtime, of the delicate craftsmanship put into the way she twined the violet acoruses to intersect with the branches so neatly that it must’ve took countless of tries to get right.
It’s funny, though, the fact that Zani can’t seem to think of that—the fact that the it Phoebe had been asking about was what she thinks of her present, which by all accounts, is just as lovely as Zani had expected for it to be with its tidy presentations and all-blooming petals.
That was the logical outlook, it’s the most rational thing Phoebe would be asking about in this case, but Zani’s mind had drifted elsewhere, had been wondering instead of the one who’d built it together to begin with.
In her mind, it was the embodiment of sunshine radiating through an Acolyte with nothing but kindness and an unending penchant for servitude in her veins. It was the voice of angels molten down into an essence that had imbued itself within a faithful that sang of hymns and praises to Imperator above every morning when she wakes and every night before she sleeps. It was the face of a girl tinted pink with the surge of blood, accompanied by an expression of teetering shyness from an offhand remark that wasn’t meant to send her into such an sheepish state—but it did, and she’s so unbearably adorable, Zani thinks to herself as Phoebe tries to hide away from her gaze by lifting the mirror ever so slightly in hopes that it would block her from seeing how red she is now.
Zani smiles, wholly entranced by the sight laid upon her eyes.
“I like it,” she says, unable to take her attention away from the blush that spreads like wildfire on Phoebe’s face, affixed to her like a moth to a flame. “I like it a lot, Phoebe.”
(Her own personal meaning of it is left unsaid—but the ever-deepening red that dyes Phoebe’s face a scarlet hue coming after their eyes met for just a second; this little moment they shared, it told her that she’d understood it all the same, too.)
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