“I have to go.”

Amber eyes fluttered open. He was leaving. 

She did not want him to leave. 

A shiver passed through Cyrene’s aching limbs as his warmth faded from her bones. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut, sable lashes sweeping precariously upon cold cheeks. Cyrene knew she had no right to claim his company for another second, another hour—the night was no longer young, and her world was no longer the same. But she could not keep the disappointment from darkening her smile as Velorca rose, quietly noticing the way his golden gaze fixated raptly towards something—someone—in the distance.

Perhaps if the girl had not been so lost to her own breathless recovery from the kiss—how softly, how tentatively, had he returned her touch—she would have noticed something of much greater prominence: how different the boy in front of her had become. 

He had been all angles, all savage beauty; as sharp and beautiful as cut glass. Too beautiful. Yet Cyrene’s light touch had dabbed bit by bit at Velorca’s quicksilver mirage, until what lay below had been revealed in pieces; and then, all at once. 

Instead, a soft breath escaped pouted lips as she longed to stretch her vast wings towards his retreating body, and never let go. Steadily, so steadily, she resisted. A muted smile was the only reply the autumn girl could bestow upon those eyes of blooming, butter gold; and for them, it was enough.

Too soon, Velorca slipped back into the velvet shadows of night, his last words a caress upon her skin. She watched him go, lion eyes unwavering in their intensity.

"I will not promise to be patient,” Cyrene spoke to the empty air. 

A ghost of a smile touched her flushed lips as she lifted her eyes to the sky. Lavender lights danced among the stars, an undulating miasma of gold and red and green. Upon the snow-covered log, the solemn nymph stayed uncharacteristically still as Vespera crooned her gentle lullaby across the heavens.

Fire in the sky. The southern lights urge our return, and guide us home. Whimsical words a little girl—her name lingered hazy and half-formed in Cyrene's drowsy mind—had once spoken to her, as her small hand tucked a silver flower between the crimson girl's curls. 

"Until we meet again, Velorca.” 

And until then—my dreams will be of nothing but you.