She has started to feel braver, and she finds herself venturing further each day.

After following the river along the edge of the forest, she found herself in the meadow. This place was familiar, even if she had not chosen to spend much time here. From the moment she had learned that she could suspend herself in the clouds, that is where she had chosen to spend most of her time. She liked it up there, in the quiet beneath the stars, where she could watch the world go by below. She liked watching the way the rolling hills of clouds changed with the rising and setting of the sun, or the way they grew cool and damp when filled with rain.

And she liked watching them—the way they lived their lives, all of them interwoven in ways they perhaps did not realize. She liked to imagine how she might weave herself into those lives, painting dreamscapes in her mind from the safety of above, daydreaming and fabricating a hundred different scenarios.

But even she had begun to outgrow her dreams, and so here she finds herself, earthbound and a little lost.

Through the half-light of dawn she sees the two nearly spectral deer that seem to hardly touch the grass, and she stops to stare at them in wonder and confusion. Looking beyond where the deer had seemed to appear, she finds the stallion resting beneath the skeletal limbs of the large oak tree. She can just make out the dim outline of light around his wings, and it reminds her almost of sunlight behind a cloud.

She is drawn to him immediately, pulled forward by some unnamable force.

“Hello,” she greets him softly in the hush of the cold morning, her doe-eyes wide and searching. The pale blue of his coat reminded her of the sky on a clear winter's day, and the gentle glow—softer even than her own, which to her always felt too bright in the dark, especially when accompanied by the glittering stardust—felt like starlight, and while she cannot explain it, something about him felt safe and familiar. “You remind me of the sky,” she tells him with a hesitant smile, having learned that not everyone was so welcoming to strangers.

Heat flushes through her at the way he speaks to her and looks at her, and for a moment that hollow ache in her chest seems to ease, as if soothed by his reverence. Something else sparks alongside of it—an unyielding need to chase more of this feeling that she can only describe as being wanted. She does not recognize this yet for what it is—her fatal flaw, the thing that would likely someday be her undoing should the history of her mother’s blood decide to repeat itself. All she knows is that her heart had given an unexpected skip at the sound of his voice, and this feels like the very scenarios she had built in her mind while dreaming up in the clouds.

“That can’t be true,” she says, her demure smile nearly hidden by the way she casts her eyes to the ground instead of his face as she tries to gather herself. He is such a stark contrast to the last man that she had met that she finds she is even more unsure of herself than ever before. To swing so quickly from the dark to the light had her feeling unsteady, and almost timid, afraid that he might see whatever it is the ice demon had found so off-putting about her.

“Starros,” she tests his name, liking the way it felt on her tongue and how it seemed so fitting of him. “My name is Empyreal.” It did not escape her that both their names inspired thoughts of the sky and the heavens, a celestial string that she has decided will tie them together. “I hope I wasn’t intruding. I saw the deer,” she pauses, her gaze drifting to where the light had dissipated into the morning light, “and I couldn’t help but to get closer. They were lovely.”