Happiness is nothing without someone to share it with. She had heard her mother speak this words. Without something to reflect the glow that radiates off you, what do you have? And so, Astana is so grateful to Aegean, not only for the beauty he has created, to make the edges of her lips rise with joy and her heart swell with exultation, but that he is here to share it with her. That she can see his own face brightening, his heart pressing against his rib cage with the sheer happiness of spending a night with dreams and stars.
Those diamond eyes are enraptured with the world he has created around her. Ocean and stars. She wonders if this is what her mother has most frequently dreamed about. She wonders what it must be like to be surrounded by so many beautiful things whenever you wish it. How he does not simply succumb to forever living within this realm where the sun can shine, but the cloud can still rain down with gentle pitter patters. Where the ocean breeze cans till tangle sea salt in your hair, but the mountains and the forest will stand around you like a cathedral made of stone and wood. How does one ever leave? And that is perhaps what draws Astana to Aegean the most. To be a creature of dreams and reality, it is the reality of his life that astounds the little girl with eyes for diamonds the most.
She feels his words press into her. Those small hands wrapping around them like it were a precious butterfly. Her lips press to her cupped hands and she whispers back. “How do you keep the darkness away?” She asks then, and she knows that he will know her words. That she hardly means the literal darkness, but instead, those pieces of the world tucked away in the corners, haunting and waiting. There would be no beauty without the ugly in the world. How does he keep it away? Nightmares and dreams, after all, are fickle things at the best of times.
But she is distracted, again, lost to the white caps that surge and crash like her wild, wandering heart. Once more though, she is drawn away from this dazzling spectacle, something a little more than a day dream, but less than reality, by his enchanting voice. A voice that burrows under her skin with warmth and comfort, settling in the base of her heart like sand at the bottom of the ocean. “Me?” She questions with hope framing her lips like lipstick. “You think it will?” She asks with bright eyes that look a thousand times brighter against the reflection of starlight and snow. With trembling hands (whether from excitement or nerves she doesn't know) she takes those keys into her hands. There are so many doors, she isn't sure which to try before reaching to one all too familiar.
The waves begin to change, from drops of water into grains of sand. But still they do not stop their moving. They roll and crash just like the water before them. It would seem, despite Astana’s love for her home, the place she was born, the heart in her petite golden breast is not quite ready to let go of places unexplored and unknown. “Have you been to the desert, Aegean?” She says and realizes this is the first time she has spoken his name aloud. It feels foreign on her tongue, like words of magic that could set some spell into motion. And perhaps, in a way, it has.
His touch is comforting and ethereal. Tomorrow night, when she dreams of him, she will not recall if it was him who had brushed the tear away, or if it were her own eyelashes, of the magic of the moonlight. She breathes against him, small chest rising and falling on her slender body as she does so, a rhythm as steady as her heart. “I know,” she says, even though she hardly does, is hardly aware of how long forever truly is. “I am glad you don’t,” she says then, breathes. “Aegean,” she says his name again because she loves it so. “I think, I am getting tired.” She is, after all, just a little thing.
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