[private] we made a garden of the love we found

[aestas]

Although autumn is not her favored season, Aestas cannot help but love it for Lyali’s sake. She loves traveling outside of the volcanic island and seeing the brilliant collection of colors—the golds and the reds. The explosion of them that signal the change in the air, the something new that is coming.

Still, she is not upset to live within Tephra mostly. To be cocooned in the near constant summer, with the heat and the humidity. Her thin skin darkening with sweat when she runs, her coat sleek and glossy.

She is a summer child, after all, and she does not forget it easily.

Perhaps that is why, when she rises early, when she winds through the jungle to the beach where the sun is barely rising—casting the beach in shadow and golden dawn—it is a pure, unadulterated joy that chases her as she flies across the sand. Until her lungs feel as though they may burst in her very chest.

Until it feels like she could fly.

When she returns to the near den of her sisters, she is damp from both exertion and the rain that has begun to fall. It is warm, but she does not deny that she helps it along a little, warming the air around her to keep whatever chill may find her. At the sound of rustling, she turns her head to catch the sight of Lyali shifting, water falling down her head. She had thought to find a spot to curl alongside them, catching a few more hours of sleep, but she cannot help the laugh that escapes her—quick and full-throated.

“Sil, bring the whole canopy down on her.”

The words would sound harsh were it not for the sunshine warmth that radiates through them.

so you should get on board with someone whose course is steadier than mine
you should get on board with someone whose eyes are on the horizon, not on the skies