He can have all her light, what strange little of it remains, but this dark is not for him. It is too thick and too heavy and too much for a boy made of the dark born from starlight. It is not the playful friend he leaves her for each night, not the currents that shed from the twilight sky past tree and branch and leaf. It is something more corrosive, something wrong inside her chest. It is not meant for him, not this.
Our favorites, he says, and she cannot help but shake her head at him in that soft, amused way, eyes alight and twinkling. “All of them are your favorite, baby.” She reminds him with a deeper smile, crooked and imperfect, catching a dark ear between her lips and tugging.
She takes him west, following a trail through their forest that she’s come to know by heart. Through a world of new trees and fresh growth and so much green it feels like being trapped in an emerald world. Until the trees start to change - grow wider and thicker, with leaves of red and gold and rust. Colors that make her heart ache with remembering. It was home once.
But she doesn’t take him across the border yet, despite that wild tug to find the lake and the cave and see if the man inside it is the one she discovered love with. They need food first, need to find breakfast. And Sylva isn’t her home anymore, hasn’t been in long years and there is no way to know if she would still be welcome there. Maybe they’ll come across someone in a little while, but not yet.
“Mumblecats sound wonderful,” she tells him as she steps gingerly through a rut of uneven roots, pausing to help Merry should he need it, “I definitely won’t be afraid if we meet one.” She glances away, hides a curious almost smile as she wonders where he came up with this - how he comes up with all his beautiful stories. “Maybe we can make a mumblecat out of shadows, and maybe more mumblecats will come to meet him. What do you think, should we try?”
They’ve reached the cluster of apple-trees, a small orchard of twelve trees growing every which way. The limbs tangle, the roots twist together, sunlight struggles to find the grass below as it gets trapped in such huge, grasping leaves. But it is still one of her most favorite places, so quiet and secluded, the air sweet with the rotting apples underfoot, a soft hum of wandering bees. “Come on, baby, let’s find the most perfect apples.” Which she’ll pluck for him with her shadows, carry them down where he can reach.
