and in the morning I'll be with you [epithet]

[akhil]

AKHIL

How long had it been?

Years -- fifty years, maybe. His bones should have creaked, should have ached with every step but instead they were quiet, fluid. It wasn’t his first disappearance from Beqanna -- the first after his mother died, and the most recent after his dear friends’ reign of the Deserts ended. You’d think, at his age, that he would have grown accustomed to change, but his immortality only made him yearn for stability. Perhaps that was why he was so attached to Maye -- she, too, was immortal, but more than that, she was reliable. They drifted apart, of course; they both had strayed before, but always they came back to each other. Their life together was easy, complete.

And yet.

Akhil’s large, black wings were a constant reminder of her. He had known Epithet for years, there was a different kind of love between them, and still she remained largely unattainable. Even when she was with him, with their child, she was elsewhere. Perhaps his draw to her was that she was otherworldly, while Akhil was painfully of this world. Of Beqanna.

And so he came back, as he always did. The grass of the meadow crunched beneath his feet -- a familiar sound. He missed the smooth warmth of the Deserts’ sand, the still heat that he was bred to withstand. He wasn’t yet ready to visit his home -- as often as the kingdoms changed with their new rulers, the meadow always remained the same. Here, he was comfortable.

image @ vee swan wallhd4.com

[Epithet]

Across the sea

A pale moon rises

The ships have come to carry you home

Epithet

He was here.

The jolt she felt in her blood was enough to tell her that he had come home. And with a beat of her wings, she took off to cruise just mere feet above the grass. She loved the feeling of the wind driving between the tendrils of her hair and between her ears. Scanning the meadow—the area that had been her home of late—for traces of him, she landed a hoof back onto the ground and took off at a run, her wings dissolving into a glittery cloud. The pounding of her feet on the ground beat into her head, so rhythmic, so sure.

She was so used to floating in an incorporeal state above them all, so detached, so noncommittal, that she had forgotten at the center of her being that she loved to run. And as she covered the distance from her location to where he was, she was reminded of the fact that it had been a lifetime since she had seen him. There was something that had always been different between them. They’d always been friends. They had a child together—where he was, even his mother did not know—but they had always treasured a friendship far beyond that which mere lovers do.

But instead of monogamy, Epithet had settled for something less, and while her heart had broken as he turned to another, she put a smile upon her face, schooling her delicate features, allowing her pail grey cloak to cover her emotions from him to keep him from realizing that he had hurt her. She would rather be content with having Akhil in her life than demand something that he had not been able (or willing) to give, at the time. And so, when the Deserts fell, so did she.

Flittering off into oblivion, she acted as a ghost following the wind, making friends with the whispers and the shadows that clung to the changing seasons. A broken heart that has taken half a century to heal.

And yet, she cannot resist this.

The man cloaked in ebony, ruffling his feathers against the breeze looking calm… almost at home. A breath and a clump caught in Epithet’s throat, and she was forced to stop, slow down, and pull her wings back out of the ether; cloaked, she peeled away the ghost-grey pelt from her body, seeking to blend into her surrounds. Epithet was plagued by a fear that she was unfamiliar with, and the normally serene woman shadowed her face from him as she approached. Would he recognize her?

Would he care?