"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
She leaves the same way she came, past his lake and through the trees painted like sunset and fire and ancient things. Past stones that look even larger in the daylight than they had in the dark the night before. She lingers around them, blaming the hesitance on a sense of curiosity at their immensity, at the way they are scattered like marbles across a floor. But the truth is in the weight of her chest, the ache that grew and sharpened with every step that pulled her further from the cave. Further from Stillwater and those dark, beautiful eyes. When she can linger no longer, find no more excuses to delay home, delay leaving Sylva behind, she crosses the border into Taiga and becomes a ghost between the trees.
If anyone notices her, they do not say anything.
Time feels slower now than it had before, suspended in between the beats of her trembling heart. It feels strange without his heat beside her, without his eyes in the hollows of her face and his smile in the crook of her neck. It feels even lonelier than the stars looked in the sky, so bright, so beautiful, so isolated from one to the next in an ocean of dark and unknown.
Her breath hitches and she drops her eyes, tucking her chin close to the curve of her small chest so as to hide the pain that gathers there. She isn’t sure why she does it, there is no one here, no prying eyes, and even then it would be difficult to make sense of the blue girl appearing in slivers of sunlight and disappearing again as soon as shadow touched her skin. Still, this pain, this ache, it feels private. So she tucks it away where she thinks no one will find it, no one but Stillwater, should she ever see him again.
It is dusk by the time she reaches the edge of Taiga where it curves with the Forest to hold a small lake between them. She did not mean to stop here, but suddenly she is following its edge into the trees of the neutral territory, pausing when a small beach reveals itself to her in the growing dark. The smile that finds its way to those pale, perfect lips is faint and uncertain, shy, and it makes her whole face soft with a longing that blooms in her chest.
“Stillwater.” She breathes, despite that he is miles and miles away, tucked in his cave or in the sand at the shore of his lake. She eases forward towards the water, stopping before it could lap at the grooves in her dark hooves, and then closes those sad, solemn eyes against the night that blossoms like a bruise overhead. For a long moment she is still and silent, her body soft and slight as it leaned forward to press against the breeze coming in off the waves. Around her and through the dark, those lights appear again, floating like fireflies and sunken stars, sinking like snowflakes against the faded blue of her skin and disappearing somewhere deep inside.
It is the product of remembering, and fondly, the quiet man with the dark face who had held her safe through the night. It is the product of remembering, less fondly, where the ache in her chest had come from. What she does not realize, standing sad and quiet and alone on the shore, no longer camouflaged by the dark, is the light that appeared in Sylva, too.
A small mare, slight and slender, peppered through with gleaming light and dark to match the colors on Lusters dusty roan skin appears at the shore by the lake. There is no sound, no smell, no way to touch what is only light and bright and the result of remembering. But it is there and it is quiet, and when it lifts its small, dark face to the night, there are a hundred flickering stars in that sky, too. Stars like sunken ships and lost fireflies, waiting patiently for a pair of deepwater eyes to find them.
She didn't want him, didn't want their child. She'd played him for a fool, and he'd believed it easily. Willingly. Because she'd never lied to him before. He thought she'd wanted them. He thought she'd taken him back, forgiven his memory loss and his absence. But she never came back, never came home. Never truly cared.
Did she want him to have others then, was that it? She wanted him to fixate on someone else? Didn't want his love anymore?
That's when the lights came to life, bobbing and glowing softly over the water running through the forest and snagging his furious attention. He'd avoided the place where he'd lost Leliana; didn't want to remember the heat finally reaching her eyes, the touch of her skin against his lips, the taste of her. The loss of her. She wouldn't be a part of what he would do tonight to this star mage. Safely tucked away and shoved from his mind.
But Cerva. Cerva remained. Because whatever happened, this was her fault.
He stalked closer, a fierce wildness in his eyes. A dark purpose. Stealth was never something he felt the need to learn, but she was so absorbed in her thoughts he didn't think she was aware of the danger swiftly approaching. He bared his teeth and launched himself at her, latching onto the muscle in her slender neck and tearing away. Blood immediately rushed to the surface, spilled over with as much perfect grace as she'd had just a moment before. Slick, and slow and sweet.
He set himself next to her, arching over her smaller body to grip her opposite shoulder and thrust her forcefully against his side. Then he held her there, immovable and unyielding, letting her see how useless attempts to escape him would be, how futile her struggling would be. Her blood coated him where he pressed her to him, but he hardly noticed. When he was confident she got the message, he slowly released that iron-tight grip and drew his muzzle carefully along her neck like an attentive lover.
There is worse to come if you try to run, he promised in a hot whisper, placing a sweet kiss behind her ear. He could smell another on her, lathered all across her in a blatant claim of territory, but not recent enough that he thought she might have a rescue. Perhaps he should let her live, then. Let it be a message not to let her out of her lover's sight if he was so intent on his claim. He certainly never would have, had his memory of Cerva remained in tact. Nobody would have ever touched her, ever. Only him.
What kind of man bathes you so entirely in his scent, but doesn't take you, doesn't keep you? he asked quietly, drawing his mouth along her neck and plucking his teeth at her jaw. A light sting, a sweet coaxing to her nerves. What kind of man lets you out of his sight if he truly wants you? He kissed at her throat, slow and sensual, as though they had always been secret lovers and he was merely reminding her which one she really cared for. Remember me? his touches said to a stranger. I remember you.
He's not good enough for you. I will show you what it's like to be wanted.
She doesn’t turn when his eyes find her in the hazy dark, doesn’t hear the sound of his hooves when they sift through damp, heavy sand. But she knows he is there, somehow she knows, because the light-luster, the shadow-self, the impossible mare standing beneath impossible stars on Stillwater’s beach turns and looks back into the dark. Its eyes go wide and round, and that small, beautiful face is changed wholly by surprise, and then again by fear and pain. It is only in the half-second before Dovev makes contact, the time that lives between two heartbeats, that Luster realizes anything is amiss. It is only when his teeth find purchase in the soft of that blue skin, when they dive beneath fur and into flesh that she turns, too, and her face is the same as the mare outside Stillwater’s cave. Changed by pain and horror, and a surprise that neither one can understand.
Both are broken, both bleed. Red and warm and sweet from Luster’s trembling, blue neck. Black like shadow, like dark fog, from an identical wound in the mare made of light and dark. While the first is real and trapped, flesh and blood and such terrible, tangible things, the second is made only of longing and emotion, of the ache in a heart, and it dissolves like poured sand into the ashes of Stillwater’s beach. All of the stars above both beaches extinguish instantly.
She does not have time to find a word to cling to, not stop or help or why, there is only enough time to recoil from the shock, from the closeness, from the pain that blooms several seconds later. It is shock, maybe, that the pain only seems to dawn on her once she notices the warm and the wet and the red against his mouth. But when it does it is blinding, and she cries out against it in a voice that could shatter all the stars in all the skies. She tries to stumble back, to put distance between them – though she knows she isn’t brave enough to run, isn’t brave enough to turn her back on him, to take her eyes off of his face – but he is already there and locking her to his chest with a neck that feels entirely too powerful for the emaciated body it belongs to.
“Please,” she says, she whispers, she struggles in his grip, “you’re hurting me.” If she weren’t so shocked, so confused, she might’ve realized what a silly thing that was to say to him. Of course he knew he was hurting her, of course he meant to hurt her. But she is soft and sweet and it is impossible for her to try and understand what she might’ve done to coax so much rage from him, impossible to understand why he would want to hurt her. “Please.” She says again, another broken whisper, two dark eyes that shatter into glass. But he doesn’t stop, doesn’t let go, and so she forces what little remains of her light between their skin. It is meant like a shield, like a wall of glass to push him back, but she is so tired from traveling, so tired from the mare made of light that she did not realize she sent back to Sylva, and the wall between them is more like a thin, watery membrane. Slippery and soft, but useless in pushing him back.
Finally she stills against his chest, exhausted and spent and with a heart beating faster than the stars could flicker against their moorings in the sky. It is as though he can sense her weariness, her cautious defeat, because suddenly she is released from his chest, from the strong curve of a sharp, bony neck. She doesn’t run, she wishes she could, but she is not stupid enough to test him so outright when he is clearly both much stronger and more well rested than she. An instant later and his mouth is against her neck, tracing the lines of delicate muscle beneath the blue as though he had any right to be so close, as though he expected her to accept his touch.
She can’t.
Her ears pin to the back of her skull, disappearing into the tangles of dark and corn-silk mane, and she turns her face away from him, leaving her neck just out of reach of those hot, wandering lips. There is worse to come if you try to run. His warning is like a slap to the face, a knife forced into her chest, and suddenly she cannot breathe, cannot speak, cannot force her feet to take a few steps back even though her mind is begging. His mouth is against her skin again, a kiss placed so sweetly behind the curve of her ear in that soft, warm crook. But it is nothing like when Stillwater held her, nothing like his lips and his touches, his closeness that she had come to wish for. This is different and it is dark, it makes her skin crawl and her breath turn to ice in her lungs.
“Why?” She asks, almost a whimper, but she is trying so hard to be brave, trying so hard to understand why this stranger is so mad at her, why he traps his hate in kisses against the soft of her blue skin. Why me? It is the question that everyone must ask, the easiest question to shape ones lips around in a moment as strange and illogical as this one. “Why are you doing this?” Her eyes are so sad, so bruised, her face made less beautiful (or maybe more depending on whose eyes are watching) by the fear that deepens those hollows and draws tight lines of tension across the dark of her cheeks.
But his mouth is at her neck again, where the skin is stained with red and damp, and his teeth pinch lightly along the lines of her delicate jaw. What kind of man bathes you so entirely in his scent, but doesn't take you, doesn't keep you? His question makes her brow furrow and her eyes round, because she does not understand what he means until he speaks again. What kind of man lets you out of his sight if he truly wants you?
Stillwater.
Surprise wells beside the fear in her chest, thickens in her veins and in her voice because she had not considered his scent would still be so strong against the blue of that soft, trembling skin. “I am not meant for keeping.” She tells him, frowning even despite the way her voice trembled with pain and fear and an adrenaline she could do nothing with. “Maybe he does not truly want me.” She isn’t sure why she is so eager to answer his questions, except maybe for the fact that when he is speaking, he is distracted, and those dark lips don’t move so freely, so eagerly across her skin. But then they are both quiet, and his lips are against her throat as if they had lived there for centuries, as if every delicate hollow and curve was made specifically to be filled by him.
Another kiss and this time she does pull away, a few tentative steps back so that she can more easily see his face. She is surprised to find that he is beautiful, long and thin and full of sharp angles like marble and diamond. The bone plates are imposing, made almost grotesque by the damp blood that congeals around them, but he looks like a soldier, like a warrior, like someone she might’ve trusted. He doesn’t look like a monster, like a beast, but she remembers his teeth buried in her neck, flesh torn wide open, lips and kisses where they didn’t belong. She looks closers, looks for the madness in eyes so dark they could hardly be called black. But she still cannot understand. Her breathing stutters and trembles, and her eyes are filled with broken glass when they fall across his face. “I don’t need to be wanted,” a pause, a heartbeat, and she cannot help the way her small body trembles with fear and pain, “I just want to go home.”
Her voice was soft; a sweet tinkling of bells, a twinkle of stars. He smiled against her skin, brushing aside her distress. It was temporary. She'd like it soon. He kept kissing her, kept his sweet lover's affections. This is what Cerva wanted, then, wasn't it. For him to forget her, find another. And here she was, odd little blue thing that she was.
"I am not meant for keeping," her voice trembled, "Maybe he does not truly want me." Mmmm, he hummed back absently, savoring the taste of her, imagining that shiver of fear was her desire for him. It soon would be.
She pulled away then, took a few steps back to look at him and he let her. Dark eyes softened in the heat of the moment, watched her as she took in his appearance. Nothing seemed to alarm her more than his actions, accepting the repulsive bone armor and the bone-thin body. His eyes flickered curiously at that. It was his attack that had shaken her so much, immediately filled in with adoring attention. "I don't need to be wanted. I just want to go home." He smiled and reached carefully for her cheek, keeping warm eyes on hers.
Home is later, love. A light kiss, lips trailing along the gentle sweep of her jaw. I am now, he whispered. Black velvet brushed sweetly against her neck, breathing his warmth into her. Carefully, he stepped to her again, pressing his chest to hers and burying his face in her soft hair. He sighed into it. Come, love. Stay with me.. His voice was gentle, almost a plea. But he wasn't asking.
His mouth played in her hair, groomed her tentatively though it was flawless. After a few moments, he drifted to the bite at her neck. Ahh, he crooned in perfect remorse, kissing it tenderly. I don't know my own strength. You are so delicate. Barely a whisper in awe of her, quiet and loving. He pressed his tongue to it, tended her, tasted her. Soft lips played at the edges, balancing the earlier pain with a new sweetness.
Come on, he prodded gently, seeking those beautiful, wide eyes with a playful little smile. Don't you want to feel me too?
He covers her skin in quiet kisses, drenching her in affection the way the stars drench her in silver. But these kisses aren’t welcome, and even though they are so gentle and so sweet the way he presses them against the white lace of sabino and roan, they still make her skin hurt and her chest ache and her stomach knot with worry. “Stop.” She tells him finally, pushing his nose away with hers and it is the first time she has voluntarily touched him. Lightly, so lightly, because worries about the bone plate in his face, worries about the blood that thickens around it, worries that she might hurt him if she isn’t gentle. “Stop.” Again, and she clings to this word, this simple word, wrapping her fingers around its hilt and brandishing it like a blade against him.
But he does not hear her or he does not care, because his lips are on her face again, a kiss as warm as the summer traced along the curve of her jaw and all she can do is try not to tremble. Home is later, love, he says so softly, I am now. But when the fear in her belly deepens, it changes, too, morphing to something that forces shadows from the fissuring pieces of her soul. Her brow furrows and her brown eyes are angry, bright and furious against that delicate face in the dark night. “I am not your love.” She reminds him, though it doesn’t help the way her skin is soft and tremulous and uncertain beneath his wandering lips, that it is kindness and not pain that he washes her in now. “And you are not my anything.” She sidesteps his next touch easily, disappearing from beneath his lips before they could force any more uncertainty into the already churning confusion of her thoughts.
Except then he is three, two, one step away and closing fast, and she has no time to move away before their chests are locked together and his face is buried so eagerly in the dark of a tangled, corn-silk mane. Come, love. Stay with me. She frowns and in a voice like captured starlight, reminds him, “I am not your love.” But she doesn’t pull away from him, doesn’t bury her teeth in his neck as he had done to her, because it takes only a handful of seconds to feel his heart beating against hers, only a handful of seconds for it to remind her that he is not entirely beast. She can feel his mouth against her mane, careful and sweet when he smooths her hair back into those dark, winding currents, can still, still, still, feel his heart beating a rhythm against her chest. It calms her somehow, despite the knots in her stomach, despite this wretched forced closeness, despite the ache in her neck and the blood that seeped from it in tears because it knew, even if she didn’t yet.
For a while, she is stiff in this embrace, stiff with his mouth against her neck, stiffer still when his nose drops to the wound and she feels suddenly like she is coming undone. But then she feels his tongue and his remorse, both pressed so gently to the tattered edges of an ugly wound, and finally, she does soften. Just a little. Just barely. I don’t know my own strength. You are so delicate. His words are so tender, but she is not entirely foolish, not entirely a slave to the way her body trembles beneath his lips, and, so slowly, she presses her nose to a place on his shoulder where flesh has been mangled by bone and made weary by the blood spread across it. She is gentle, so careful, and even now with rocks in her chest and a blade buried in her belly, she does not want to hurt him. “I think you’re lying.” She admits, and her words should be sharp and pointed, a well-aimed accusation, but she is Luster. She is starlight and fireflies and reflections caught in puddles. “I think you know your own strength,” a pause as she begins to clean the nearest wound, tracing the soft of her tongue across it until the blood flakes away and the skin is damp and sad and raw beneath, “and I think you know better than most how delicate skin is.” She shifts to clean the next wound of flesh and bone plate, to smooth her tongue across inflamed skin in such careful, gentle strokes.
His blood tastes awful in her mouth, like copper and maybe infection, but somehow it is easier to ignore the fear throbbing in her chest, knotting in her stomach, clawing at her bones, easier to ignore it when she can be focused on something else. But when he shifts to catch her eyes and she catches a glimpse of that playful little smile on his mouth, she is defeated. Her heart is through her chest, shattered through the fissures and laying in the dirt, and there is nothing she can do to rescue it. Come on, he says, and she rewards his efforts for her attention with those sad, luminous eyes, don’t you want to feel me too? She steps back and away from him, letting her gaze fall from his face and out to the water rippling beyond the sand they stood on. But instead of answering him, instead drawing close to appease him, to distract him, she simply says, “You’re going to hurt me again, aren’t you?” Her voice is a broken whisper, filled with glass and dust and so much debris, and when she lifts her eyes to place them carefully against his face, they are only sad and solemn and heavy with defeat. Then, even quieter, "at least stop calling me love, my name is Luster."
It matters, she thinks through the pain and the worry and dark burrowing in her chest, I am someone.
Her feeble resistance made him smile against her skin, her persistent little stop, stop as she nudged so gently at his nose then his armor plate. He hummed at her touch, enjoying that faint little tease of warmth against his hot skin. A cute shade of anger glowered in her face as she declared she was not his love, and he was not her anything. He smiled again, amused, and leaned to kiss her again but she sidestepped him this time. He filled the space without thought, moving with her as an eager lover would in this sweet dance of affection.
I am not your love, she repeated to him again, but he brushed it aside with a whisper. Tonight you are. And he gently melted to her neck again, spreading adoration across her with sweet kisses. He slid to her wound and gave her a sad frown of remorse, tenderly caring for the brutish injury he'd thoughtlessly placed upon her with careful sweeps of his tongue.
He felt her finally begin to soften beneath him, just a little, and his blood heated and coursed swifter through him. Her precious skin trembled beneath his touch, and damn he loved that too. Then she did something bad. Something so incredibly good. Her nose pressed to his bare shoulder, so gently, so lightly, and he exhaled in a quiet gasp.
I think you're lying. I think you know your own strength. Her voice is so soft, so surprisingly gentle, but it couldn't have prepared him for what she did next.
She tended him in return, nursed the wounds that could only heal temporarily. His skin was so sensitive, and the briefest touch of her tongue shocked bolts of electricity through him in a wave of heightened sensation. He moaned softly and locked deep, black eyes on her, couldn't tear his gaze away. And I think you know better than most how delicate skin is, she added as she moved to the next wound. He watched her, sharp and intense and hungry, and held back another moan.
When he tried to catch her eye, tried to prod her and coax her with a playful grin, she stepped away and looked outward. He felt that loss, and hated himself for pushing so soon, for making her steal her warmth away. You're going to hurt me again, aren't you? So sad, so broken. So quickly he had already shattered another one in his needy grasp. At least stop calling me love, my name is Luster.
Luster, he echoed quietly, his voice hollow and shallow with pain. Why must he always break everything he touches? He stepped tentatively to her once again, one last time, and gently but firmly gripped her opposite shoulder and pulled her to him. He held her carefully this time, his cheek brushing so sweetly against the soft blue of her neck. More remorse, more pain and sadness dug from within him and brought to the surface.
Find me again sometime, he murmured into her dark hair, not for a moment believing that she ever would. Not after what he'd done, and how he was. Who he was. I live in Ischia. Then he turned and walked away, a heavy slump in his lonely shoulders. A shattering, piercing pain in his heart.
Your man is stupid for letting you out of his sight. A grumbled compliment with a sharp bite to it. Maybe the bastard would learn better with his dark passing in her life.
Luster, he says, and she is startled by the pain in the hollowness of his voice. Her eyes lift to his face again, tentative and uncertain, soft when she peers a little closer at the dark of those strange eyes and the shadows that pool in the ridges between bones strung too tight. She cannot see the change, not in those eyes, not in his face, but she can hear it in his words, in that hollow ache, that broken echo. He steps close to her again, and she realizes she can see the change in this, too. He doesn’t ask, doesn’t refrain from touching her as she had requested so many times, but he is as tentative as she is, and when he pulls her tight against his chest again, she does not fight him.
When his cheek brushes her neck, she knows she should flinch, knows she should ache with the closeness. But something feels different, changed. He doesn’t press kisses where he shouldn’t, doesn’t run his lips across the mottled blue of her throat. So when he holds her so close, holds her until her bones stop their trembling and her heart finds its feet and finally stops tripping over itself, she is soft and quiet and gentle beneath him. Find me again sometime, he murmurs against her mane, low enough that she can feel his voice where it rumbles like distant thunder in his chest, I live in Ischia.
She is so confused, so uncertain, so disoriented by this turn of events that she does not move, does not say anything when he releases her abruptly and turns to leave. But the slump in his shoulders resonates like an echo of defeat in her thoughts, feels like lonely fingers twisting anxious knots in her chest and suddenly she does not want him to go.
Except-
Her brow furrows, drawing deep lines across the delicate blue, casting deep shadows against the pale white. She knows, she knows, that she should let him go. Can still feel the throb of the wound that is little more than a mangle of raw nerves and damp blood in the crook of her neck, of a wound that he had placed there. But she can also still hear the pain in his voice, and she is certain as she watches him walk away that it is something dark and broken that caves in his shoulders that way. He is agony made tangible, bone thrust through skin, skin torn wide and weeping, and yet not once did he flinch against that pain. If there is something in his chest, in his heart, something that is strong enough to press such weight against those dark, elegant shoulders, she can only imagine that the pain must be insurmountable.
Your man is stupid for letting you out of his sight. It is this last grumbled, compliment that forces the rest of her uncertainty aside, casting a light so that the shadow can’t quite reach her. “Wait,” she calls after him, soft and hesitant and silver, “wait.” She is at his side again in a moment, peering up at him with wide, dark eyes that are soft and only a little wary when they settle against his face. “Ischia?” She repeats, brow furrowing again as she reaches her nose out gently to his shoulder to stop him. “That’s the island, isn’t it?” Worry floods her face, quiet and slow moving, pooling like shadow in every curve and hollow and delicate arch of bone until she has stepped close enough to tip her face up to him in the dark. When she speaks, there is a quaver of uncertainty in her voice, one last shred of uncertainty before she softens for this beast who is not a beast, this beast who is a man she is suddenly worried for. “You can’t mean to swim it in the dark.” She says, she asks, she worries as she traces her eyes across his face again, across bone and beauty and black as smooth and sharp as obsidian. “It’s too dangerous.” Her nose touches his neck, just once, so briefly, and then she pulls back again, uncertain. “Stay here instead.” A pause and her eyes widen and leap to his face, her skin flushing pink beneath the blue. “With me. You can leave when the sun comes up again.”
Her brow creases as she watches him, worried, wondering why she is doing this, why she is trusting the man who buried his teeth in her neck and his lips in her throat. It doesn’t make any sense, and yet here she is at his shoulder, soft and imploring, reaching up with gentle lips to brush aside the stray tangles of his forelock where they threatened to stick to the wet blood crusting around the bone plate. “I would’ve stayed with you, you know,” a pause as she draws her nose back towards her chest, “I would’ve stayed as a friend if you had just asked.” When she looks away it is to hide the bruises in her eyes, the woundedness of that delicate blue face now turned to the night. Then, quieter, gentler, “And he isn’t my man.”
Now instead of stop, stop used against him, it was wait, wait. His ears flicked back in confusion but he kept walking -only until she was there at his side, peering up at him with wide, soft eyes. He stopped, frowning at her as she repeated his home, Ischia. That's the island, isn't it? An abrupt nod was all the answer she received, his mind trying to understand that she was here -next to him as he tried to leave- and not out there running from what he'd already done to her. What he could still do to her.
You can't mean to swim it in the dark. It's too dangerous. His face softened just the slightest, distracted by her concern and the brief touch she placed to his neck. She retreated, her doe-eyes wide. Stay here instead. With me. You can leave when the sun comes up again.
He almost smiled, almost chuckled, but then her lips were gently brushing his hair away from the blood lining his faceplate and he could only stare at her with his breath neatly stolen from his lungs. I would've stayed with you, you know. I would've stayed as a friend if you had just asked. He ached to reach out and touch her, but was suddenly afraid to. Her sad eyes turned away then, her soft voice falling. And he isn't my man.
He touched his lips gently to her brow, a faint sweep before he pulled away. You shouldn't worry for me, he said soberly. Then he turned away again. Thanks, love, but I gotta get home. After a few steps, a little distance, he dropped a little bit of advice, maybe.
And your man smells like deception.
You know where to find me. A smile in his voice.
He is so still beneath her lips and suddenly she is unafraid, even despite the wound weeping against her neck. She isn’t sure if it is his brokenness she loves, the way he is like glass, a million shards of sharp and agony all forced together to create something beautiful, or if it is the unknown of him that whispers to the curiosity in her heart. But when his lips return to her brow, soft and sweet and as gentle as she had been, she simply closes her eyes and lifts her chin to him.
But then he is pulling away and turning away and her eyes are sad and solemn and knowing when they pool with the shadows in the hollows of his back. “I will worry anyway.” She says and she frowns, tucking her delicate chin close to the curve of a pale blue chest. Then, furrowing her brow at him, she says again, reminds him, “It’s Luster.”
He pauses and she wonders if he has changed his mind, if he’ll stay as long as the stars do and then disappear with the dawn. But it is a warning that falls from his lips, gentle enough to be advice, and she flicks her ears forward to catch the words before the wind can steal them from her. And your man smells like deception. She flinches a little in surprise at this, those dark eyes widening and her mouth slackening. But doubt, or maybe confusion, keeps her silent until he speaks again and she can hear the shape of his smiling lips.
“Yes,” she calls after him, taking a few steps toward his retreating back before stopping again, “I do. She regrets that he had not shared his name with her, that instead she would remember him by his teeth most of all, and by the sad burrowed so deeply within the marrow of his bones. A name would’ve been better. But she watches until the dark claims him, until the black of his skin and the black of night are entirely indiscernible, and she wonders how long it will be before he notices that single sphere of light she had tucked against his chest. It would remain there until she fell asleep, until her mind was pried from him. She would’ve given him more, would have illuminated his path home, illuminated all the ocean between here and Ischia, but she does not have the strength for it. Instead, he would just have one single, stubborn star. With a small sigh and a whisper, she finds a hollow in the deep words and curls there tiredly, “Goodbye.”
