[private] so give me hope in the darkness

[Islay]

Islay flickers in and out of existence.

She is there and then gone again. One moment, a girl of cloud and sky and then there is nothing but the swallowing darkness that devours everything. It happens again when she looks behind her, searching for some sign of life in this place that isn't cursed. Searching and hoping that it isn't Death behind her.

If she were a braver girl, she might have remained in his sight. But the moment that his voice calls out, she vanishes. She doesn't take the risk that he could be anything else but a monster. Islay reaches for the dark and tangles herself in it, disappearing in the blink of an eye.

But then she blinks. She blinks and sees the galaxies spinning on his legs. She catches the starlight shimmering in his wings and this sets something alight in Islay. The painted girl drops her shadows and emerges on the other side of him. "You haven't lost your stars," she says in a voice that holds all the warmth that their world currently lacks and wonder that has been lost this past year. She speaks to him with a familiarity that implicates they have met before (they haven't but Islay had been the only child on Islandres. With her imagination, it isn't hard to believe that she crafted playmates from moonbeams and stardust. It isn't so hard to believe that her imaginary playmates would have looked like him.)

The daughter of Darkness looks at him and sees nothing wicked at all.

"No," she tells him with a slight shake of her two-toned face. "Just Islay."

"Who are you?"