[private] so give me hope in the darkness

[Islay]

All Islay has known is kindness.

Her nights had been spent under the tutelage of her ever-patient father - learning the secrets of starlight and how to divine the weight of shadow. She wasn't an only child but her only sibling had been much older than her and seemed to inherit that wanderlust that afflicted their always wandering mother.

She had grown up tucked safely away on the white shores of Islandres with only the mysteries of the mainland to wash up on their beach. Seaworn wood from Taiga. Pale stones that she liked to imagine were crumbled against the granite cliffs of Nerine. The antlers of a creature that she thought wandered the Tephran jungle.

Even during those few interactions where Narcisus (another child living in Paradise) had been, well, himself, Islay had still been kind because that is all she knows.

And it doesn't change; even when their world plummets into darkness and there are a thousand things to be afraid of (with sharp teeth and an abyss for a soul), Islay still smiles because this is how she finds her balance. The world goes dark so she stays light. Her head tilts slightly to the left when Mariner says that he is searching for nothing. She stays silent but wonders why he wouldn't be wandering. It's not as if he can get lost, she thinks. Not when he has those glowing stars on his hide. A soul has no better compass than them.

"We were supposed to meet at the next full moon," Islay explains and then the small smile on her lips turns wistful. She doesn't say more because everybody knows that the following moon never came.

He's got to be teasing her, right? She can't fathom Aesta purposefully evading her any more than she can imagine that he would be intentionally cruel. A pale blue ear flicks and the two-toned girl shakes her head. "Well, isn't Beqanna fairly large?" She teases back to Mariner, as if the two of them have done this before. Her silver eyes trace the shape of his wings while she amuses herself with an idea. "Surely you're never in the same place very long."

The darkness against her blue-and-white sides swirl and shift, readjusts and reconciles itself to form a pair of pitch-black (the color of the deepest and furthest galaxies) wings. Islay has never done this before and her head turns to admire her handiwork before she turns her attention back to @[mariner]. "What's it like to fly?"