The long summer nights kept Litotes company when he knew he deserved no other. When he felt as if Lilt’s warm, glowing fur burned him with guilt, he would escape into those summer nights. Humidity would tangle his hair and sweat would coat his neck, but the physical sensations kept what haunted him the most at bay: his own foolishness. His escape was often within the Brilliant Pampas, pale cremello fur illuminated by the soft blue glow of some strange magical fungi. Beneath a cliff’s overhang he stood and stared, handsome but no longer in the brooding way of his youth, shadows curling around the hardened edges of his face.
Like steel, his muscles would harden. Like clockwork, his face would turn to face the shimmying reflection of the moon.
Litotes thinks of hot, humid air expelling from his tightened lungs while deftly hidden in his shadows. Now, beneath Sylva’s hued, dappled sunlight, he dreams of his escape. Trapped in his exaggerated perceptions of himself and exhausted by irritating self-pity—pathetic, some might call him, but well-intentioned nonetheless.
Lilt’s hesitant call dredges the sludge Lie’s mind becomes when isolated for days at a time, lifting an instinctual excitement and that aforementioned self-pity. He doesn’t start, but he does stall for a few moments, topaz eyes caught, wondering if she’ll fade like the glow of the cliff’s mushrooms when the sun rises.
But she doesn’t. She never does. Lilt, as constant as the sun and as sweet Hyaline’s plums, looks for him the same way every time she finds him. The way he’s always needed.
“Lilt,” Lie states simply as the shadows fall away. “I didn’t think you’d catch me following you.” All he had wanted was to catch a glimpse of what she was like when with her family, this secret part of her life he feels so locked out of. A stray part of Lie wonders if this unknown part of Lilt is unknown for a reason. “I should have known better,” he adds while ruefully smiling. “You know what my magic looks like.”
Litotes quickly closes the space between them, now suddenly desperate to draw his cheek across hers. After days of wallowing, he is starved of the touch he won’t let himself have. When their skin brushes, Lie smiles and lets out a gentle breath, as if he had thought this show of affection might taint what good lies between them.
as it softly glides across your back
and i hope you leave right before the sun comes up
so i can watch it alone
