[private] always weigh what i've got against what i left; oksana

[Oksana]

you taught me the courage of the stars before you left

how light carries on endlessly, even after death

It is strange to be happy. Strange to remember where she had come from, where she had been, and to see where it had led. She was born an orphan, except not, born instead in bath of blood to a mother who had lived but had not cared enough to come find her. She was raised by a chamber king, and he was cruel and he was selfish, but he had been a father and she loved him all the same. He had given her a home in the Chamber, a place to bury her roots, and he had given her a family in Straia, in the sister she still loved most in the world. He had even given her a throne, though its people had hated her and she had disappeared almost as quickly. She had let him down, and he loved her anyway.

And still, still, it was not that life that she loved above all else.

It was the one she had made with Makai, the one that had started the day their lives literally collided in the meadow. She can still remember it so clearly, the wild way he had crashed against her, and how it had been little more than a reflex to catch and hold him despite the savage way her burned her. She had seen his wild, felt it against her skin, and she had loved it immediately. They had always been strange together, perfect in their imperfection, and even when they unraveled they always came back together. He was a knife in her chest, and sometimes it hurt to love him, less now than it had before, but without him she could not lived. He held all her pieces together even when he was busy taking them apart- even when he thought he could save her by leaving.

She wakes to find him gone, and even though things have been good, even though things are still good, she feels that echo of worry spark and spit in the pit of her chest. This feeling is reflexive, it is thoughtless and inexplicable, but it comes from the map of scars on her heart, of wounds long since healed but impossible to forget. They sit like a weight in her chest, a quiet reminder that in good there is also bad, that they cannot hide from their demons forever. A reminder that what they have is not an easy thing, even if it is everything.

But she finds him between the trees, she finds him whole and well and content, she finds him with a smile that takes shape just for her, and that spark of worry sputters out. Languidly, she rolls her shoulders, stepping out of the shadows to close the distance between them.

“I did,” she says with a smile that is soft and subtle against the red of her delicate mouth, “I dreamt of the day we met.” She slips close to him, her feathered wings a heavy emerald as they unfurl at her withers, aloft and erect to catch the morning light. And then she is beside him with that smile pressed to his shoulder and those lips tasting the sweat that dapples his dark, smooth skin. “Do you remember that day, Makai?” When her eyes lift to his they are as bright as emeralds because she knows he does, he must, and she wants to watch him remember it, too.

oksana