The late wind snapped my hair behind me like a banner before shifting capriciously and tangling the curls into my face, where they caught on drying tears. In the darkness the lapis-colored sand was nearly black, the water silvery pale in comparison, crashing restlessly into foamy mithril ripples before pouring back into the sea. Only the first moon had risen, trailing low in the sky, illuminating a brilliant swath of ocean, a crystalline trail from shore to horizon.
Blue sand was everywhere, in my hair, my clothes, my mouth, and I did not care. Sitting bonelessly with limp hands curled around a single night-dark feather I stared at that dimante pathway with a fierce longing, as though it would take me on a journey to a long-dead past, a time I was only now remembering as more than pieces of a dream. If I could only follow. If only I could walk on the water, or fly as he did.
Everything I thought I knew to be true had come crashing down on my head, and I felt completely and utterly lost. My enemy, my captor, was none other than the man for whom I had begged to return to Erthe. My lost love gone black, bitter and half-mad. But I was her, and not-her, this Ruenth. I had a different father, and a mother, and a man to whom I'd promised. What about Aurn?
I was shivering, but didn't feel cold anymore. At least, not until heat burned silently at my back, the presence of a body behind me made known more by the sudden silence of wind not blowing in my ears than by any noise it itself generated. The warmth brought sudden awareness of how chilled I'd become.
"Ruenth."
How could a word be both so familiar, and so jarring to the ear all at once? Not my name, but the sound of it on his tongue as comfortable as falling rain, or a fire's warmth. I couldn't answer.
"Should I not address you thus?" His voice was pitched low, which I read too well, an attempt to mask distress. He was an open book for me. "You've not given me any other name to use." There was a rustling of feathers, an uncertain gesture I did not have to see. The deja vu of this interaction made my hair stand on end.
I wanted to run away, and yet when I turned his face broke my heart. Cold as stone, with such an unfamiliar hardness, but the eyes of my Tauraven lay behind. His hands were spread in consternation. He wanted to touch me, embrace me, and the part of me that was her was dying for want of the same. But the rest of me did not know, was not sure.
I must have been as transparent to him as he to me. He closed his eyes, drawing himself back in. "I wish you had not come," he said evenly. "How can I now draw comfort even from your memory, when you stand before me in flesh and flinch away, a stranger?"
"Don't," I said, without thought, touching his arm. I smothered my squeamish cowardice and faced this new reality. I had asked for this. For him. For him, and certainly not to cause him yet more pain.
"I'm sorry," I began, folding slowly into his unmoving embrace, shaking again. "I am. I didn't want to hurt you. I didn't mean to forget…" I tried to continue, but my throat had closed again, and it was all I could do not to sob into his chest.
His arms finally closed around me, and then the whisper of wings behind, his chin on my hair. It was like coming home, in a way, after a long absence. Albeit if someone had moved all the furniture while I'd been gone. I was shorter, now, stretching up onto tiptoe to replace the height. For all of that it was still perfect, one fleeting moment of bliss while everything else receded: wars, lovers, insanity, death.
For one instant it was only he and I, and I finally found the peace I had not gained even among the Heavenly grove of Erith's trees.
"Tomorrow," he echoed my thoughts. "In the morn we'll have to deal with everything, and I fear there is no solution. But for now, you are here, you are imine/i, can we not pretend for a night that there will be no dawn?"
I made no reply other than to hold on tighter, and in a breath he had taken us into the air, filling my senses with the wonder of flight, another reality-dream half-remembered. His heart beat under my cheek, and his childish joy was my own.
Blue sand was everywhere, in my hair, my clothes, my mouth, and I did not care. Sitting bonelessly with limp hands curled around a single night-dark feather I stared at that dimante pathway with a fierce longing, as though it would take me on a journey to a long-dead past, a time I was only now remembering as more than pieces of a dream. If I could only follow. If only I could walk on the water, or fly as he did.
Everything I thought I knew to be true had come crashing down on my head, and I felt completely and utterly lost. My enemy, my captor, was none other than the man for whom I had begged to return to Erthe. My lost love gone black, bitter and half-mad. But I was her, and not-her, this Ruenth. I had a different father, and a mother, and a man to whom I'd promised. What about Aurn?
I was shivering, but didn't feel cold anymore. At least, not until heat burned silently at my back, the presence of a body behind me made known more by the sudden silence of wind not blowing in my ears than by any noise it itself generated. The warmth brought sudden awareness of how chilled I'd become.
"Ruenth."
How could a word be both so familiar, and so jarring to the ear all at once? Not my name, but the sound of it on his tongue as comfortable as falling rain, or a fire's warmth. I couldn't answer.
"Should I not address you thus?" His voice was pitched low, which I read too well, an attempt to mask distress. He was an open book for me. "You've not given me any other name to use." There was a rustling of feathers, an uncertain gesture I did not have to see. The deja vu of this interaction made my hair stand on end.
I wanted to run away, and yet when I turned his face broke my heart. Cold as stone, with such an unfamiliar hardness, but the eyes of my Tauraven lay behind. His hands were spread in consternation. He wanted to touch me, embrace me, and the part of me that was her was dying for want of the same. But the rest of me did not know, was not sure.
I must have been as transparent to him as he to me. He closed his eyes, drawing himself back in. "I wish you had not come," he said evenly. "How can I now draw comfort even from your memory, when you stand before me in flesh and flinch away, a stranger?"
"Don't," I said, without thought, touching his arm. I smothered my squeamish cowardice and faced this new reality. I had asked for this. For him. For him, and certainly not to cause him yet more pain.
"I'm sorry," I began, folding slowly into his unmoving embrace, shaking again. "I am. I didn't want to hurt you. I didn't mean to forget…" I tried to continue, but my throat had closed again, and it was all I could do not to sob into his chest.
His arms finally closed around me, and then the whisper of wings behind, his chin on my hair. It was like coming home, in a way, after a long absence. Albeit if someone had moved all the furniture while I'd been gone. I was shorter, now, stretching up onto tiptoe to replace the height. For all of that it was still perfect, one fleeting moment of bliss while everything else receded: wars, lovers, insanity, death.
For one instant it was only he and I, and I finally found the peace I had not gained even among the Heavenly grove of Erith's trees.
"Tomorrow," he echoed my thoughts. "In the morn we'll have to deal with everything, and I fear there is no solution. But for now, you are here, you are imine/i, can we not pretend for a night that there will be no dawn?"
I made no reply other than to hold on tighter, and in a breath he had taken us into the air, filling my senses with the wonder of flight, another reality-dream half-remembered. His heart beat under my cheek, and his childish joy was my own.