The festivities had not managed to make her feel better; had not managed to fill nor remove that place inside her that was drip, drip, dripping its emptiness behind her with every step she took. The laughter, the smiles, none of it had worked its way to her lips, which remained somberly downturned at the corners—when they lifted it was only for the sake of her patients, or her colleagues.

Samaira had stood outside the Shed-Star’s tent, looking beyond it’s darkened opening, wondering if going inside would bring her any peace. She had stood there, waiting for her hooves to carry her within, to ask the questions on her heart. She hadn’t, even after the man made of moonlight had gone.

She also hadn’t gathered the courage to approach the altars. Her heart ached too fiercely to set her eyes upon them, to accept the truth that stared her in the face every day in Terrastella.

So, the pegasus had sent off her bonded to do something on his own; eat, rest, celebrate in his own way, she did not mind what. Only that she was left alone, to wander the night and the quiet with only her heart and the ghosts that resided within it.

That was how she came upon the lake, leaving the joviality of the court behind her for its stillness and tranquility. For the stars, and the moon, and the shadows, which brushed across her curves like a breeze. Something inside her was missing, or buried, or lost. Some piece of her that had wanted so badly to trust. Something—

“Samaira!”

Something tugged on her, like an invisible string, compelling her to lift her head despite her desire to be alone. The voice was familiar, and her eyes were moon-bright and wide, and she wore the night like she wore the earth as blue wings and brown eyes framed by pale lashes came into focus toward her.

“Elchanan,” it took her a moment, just a moment, to recall his name. But only a moment. She remembered him because they had met on her first distant flight after her wing had healed. In a cave, somewhere north of here, she thought. Somehow, though her heart laments, she stops for him. “What are you doing out here?”

She watches the water of the lake brush up against his skin and it looks like he is standing in the sky, so perfectly does its surface reflect the stars above. Elchanan looks like a bright moon in the heavens; brighter and greater than each pinpoint of light, he manages to steal and keep her attention from his place on the shore.

Samaira looks at him as he looks at her, but all she sees is his smile and the way his pale lashes flutter against his cheeks every time his eyes close. Though he sees in her all of her raw, and longing, she says nothing too.

He says he is waiting, and she wonders, for a moment—almost asks—if he is waiting for her. But the pegasus woman knows that is silly, even as her heart skips and trips over itself at the smile upon his face. She is being foolish, she knows she is being foolish. Her heart is wanton and wanting, and betrays her at the simplest of actions.

A grand bow, sweeping low to the ground, and eyes so warm and deep and brown like the color of her skin; like they were made to look upon her skin. No, she wants to tell her heart, you have barely begun to miss the boy with twilight dancing across his curves and sea water at home within his bones.

But then Elchanan speaks, and it is like something else is living inside her veins, or someone else. Someone who does not ache, or love, or miss. Samaira thinks of the altars she had been too afraid to approach in the market square, knowing one would have his face upon it. And then he says, “You would like to dance…” and she is lost.

There is another day, with the sun above instead of the stars, and music in the air instead of the promise of winter. There is another boy. She thinks, she hears his voice, “But if you are moved to dance…” Yes, she thinks. Yes, she is.

Samaira blinks, and her moon-bright eyes find Elchanan standing before her with an outstretched wing. “Nothing would make me happier,” she responds, voice accented and soft. The words feel like an echo of something, but she isn’t quite sure what.

Still, the earthen woman smiles and, too, extends a gold flecked wing. “If you lead, I will follow,” and she takes the first step closer to him, and to the water that is as the sky. It has been so long since she has touched the sky.

Samaira lets him pull her close without struggle, lets him take her into the water until it is brushing against her ankles with its near-winter chill. She almost doesn't feel its gentle touch, almost doesn't feel…

Beneath them, the reflection of the sky and the stars dances too, among the ripples made by their movement through the lake. The stars spin and twirl until they are no longer stars, and the breeze through the trees is like a soundtrack. There is peace. Samaira thinks, is this what peace is like?

When Elchanan's chest touches hers, the heat of his skin ignites a feeling like electricity all the way down her spine. Her cheeks warm, her dark lashes fluttering against the fine tattoos upon her cheeks. A soft sound escapes her lips, like a rush of air, a gasp.

Samaira's heart beats faster. Somewhere, in her memory, the earthen woman thinks she hears the sound of music, of hooves upon cobblestone. Something about this does not feel right, like she is not meant to be dancing with him.

But something feels all too right about it, too.

And when his breath skates over her skin, playing in her hair, something in Samaira is lost to it. A shiver flits its way across her body, over each curve, delightful and terrible.

"Elchanan," her voice is nothing more than a breath, nothing more than a whisper. If it is a prayer, or a plea, it's hard to say. But his voice buries itself deep within the pegasus' veins, lingering, racing. She feels like she is drowning in a sea, but also that she does not want to come up for air.

She wants to get impossibly closer to him.

"Someone," she starts, pauses as if to reconsider her thoughts, and then continues anyway, "someone I cared for went missing on the island." Her silver eyes are downturned to the stars and sky below, her heart beating hard against her chest.

They are still swirling their way through the lake. Samaira is too aware of his body being so close to hers, that she is both dizzy and enthralled. She cannot stop herself from speaking. "There is an altar for him at the festival, I cannot bear to visit it." Her heart wants to ache, but it can't. It can't, it can't.

His touch is like velvet, like butterfly wings, and something so intimate she has never experienced before when he tugs at a strand of her hair. There are so many places that they are touching she can hardly count them all, each one like a blessing. She thinks she could be spiritual if this is what grace feels like; like his breath ghosting over the fine hairs on her neck, like she is a flame to his winter chill.

Samaira looks into his eyes, earthly and deep, and she wants to say that yes, she would like to return to the court, to the candle crowned altars and commiserative stares. Where others will dissect her heart like she is dissecting it all her own. She wants to say yes, but she cannot. For all the hiding her heart has done, it cannot lie.

“No,” No, she would not like to. The thought of standing before an altar with his name and his face upon it, lit with flickering flames by all those who held him dear… it is the unknowing that hurts her the most. That they all just disappeared, no trace of what happened to them. That she will never know if she could have told him the truths in her heart, if she could have ever trusted anyone with them the way she so desperately wants to.

“But,” she nearly stops, nearly breaks away from Elchanan’s careful, gentle embrace. She turns her eyes toward the hills, where she knows the court sits beyond them, full of life and laughter and waiting there for her is an unlit candle and so many unspoken words. “I should,” Samaira says, softly, as if trying to convince herself.

She should, she should. It’s the right thing, the good thing. He meant something to her, if the aching of her heart tells her anything about that, no matter how hard her thoughts are trying to distract her. But the press of Elchanan’s skin against hers is terribly, wonderfully foreign and the tender ringing of his voice is settling in her veins like liquid mercury; warm and poisoning. “I don’t want to keep being hurt.”

The earthen woman says it like an admission, or a plea, and the shadow in her moon bright eyes speaks to more than just an altar. Samaira doesn’t know where the honesty comes from—she has never been this honest with anyone—but she feels intoxicated and safe, with him. Why would she want to be anywhere else but here?