[private] we're so young but we're on the road to ruin, Aela

[Radiance]

R A D I A N C E

“Fear has a way of waking you up,” she says, thinking back to the way everyone had reacted to the eclipse. There had been confusion at first, as everyone waited for the darkness to pass. The confusion had quickly given way to a wide-spread anxiety, followed by fear once the creatures that lurked in the dark were discovered. Radiance cannot say that she had been afraid, exactly. A part of her was still too arrogant to think anything could happen to her—that overconfidence and sense of immortality all youth seemed to possess. “And it seems like everyone is afraid of the dark.”

She watches Aela watching her shadows, and she cannot deny the flicker of pride that warms in her chest. She liked when her shadows were appreciated, when they held someone’s attention even for a moment. And when Aela sparks a flame at her feet there is only a flicker of surprise, and then admiration in her own dark eyes.

The way her shadows curls away from the light of the flame reminds her that she has her own light, that of which she rarely uses. Her beams of light that could cut through most anything, but Radiance so preferred the dark that she hardly ever called upon it. The shadows on the ground eventually settle, though, letting the light of the flame waver against it, and Radiance meets her companions gaze with a knowing smile, “You were not afraid in the dark, were you, Aela?”

and every day is like a battle
but every night with us is like a dream