[AW] lord, if I make it through tonight; (dusk meeting)

[Samaira]

take an angel by the wings, beg her now for anything, beg her now for one more day

There is something to be said about a world that is not yours, that becomes yours so completely, so wholly. A world whose people are not your people but become them, so easily, so simply, that one day you wake up and stop question when it happened, or why. It just is.

There is something to be said about a world that was never yours, even when you were born into it.

Sometimes where you are is not where you are meant to be, and the things that happen to you are putting you in the way of the things, of the people, that are meant to happen to you. That are putting you in the place where you belong.

Samaira feels that way about Novus, about Terrastella. She feels that way about the doctors and medics and patients at the hosptial, about the equines she has met here, and grown closer to. About Alaunus, who she never would have met—never would have needed—if it hadn’t been for the things that have happened to her.

And there are so many grateful songs in her heart, so many hopeful stars in her moon-bright eyes. Every sunrise is a new beginning, a new opportunity. A new chance to do something magical, to search for the thing her heart is aching for. To smile, to laugh, to dance. To heal.

When the meeting is called, Samaira goes to the court with Alaunus at her side and enters the throng of equines pressing toward Marisol. That’s when the pegasus realizes she hasn’t spoken to the other woman since the night Marisol had found her in the swamp. How long ago now had that been? How much had they changed, had everything around them changed, since then she wonders.

Unlike the others, she doesn’t know what is wrong here. She doesn’t look upon Marisol standing alone before a crowd and see the spaces around her that should be filled with, perhaps, others. She doesn’t think about the fact that Asterion, who wants nothing more than to be seen as a man and not a king, isn’t standing there addressing his people instead of her.

Until the first words are spoken, and something inside her bends, and sways and groans. It moans, and cracks and bursts open like wood beneath the pressure of a pounding wave. Her heart is no longer a dam but a flood plain, awash in water filled with debris like hurts and sorrows.

Florentine, who had come to her in search of aid for her broken wing. What of her, and the lives she had been carrying? Her, golden and flowered, whose friendship she had grown to cherish and whose smile she had looked forward to seeing each session the woman had returned to the hospital. What light had Samaira led her into, only for her to be lost to the world?

Most of all she thinks of Asterion, dancing with her on the streets when she had been nothing more than a complete stranger, and down on the beach sharing truths, even if they weren’t the ones their hearts had really wanted them to say. How had she known him, that she would never know him again? How had she wanted to know him, that she still did not fully understand?

But she had wanted to know him, certainly.

Oh, there is something to be said about a world that is never yours, and people who are not yours, but who take your breath away and who you open you heart to anyway.

Her heart ratchets inside her chest, an unsteady, thrumming, drumming, stumbling thing. And her moon-silver eyes are wide and bright and wet with liquid silver stars that want to rain down to land upon the soft earth of her skin. And she can feel Alaunus pressed close against her side, but there are so many things that her wonderful bird can heal, and this is not one of them.

Samaira does not stay to listen, she cannot listen. She cannot hear them speak of strength and healing and memory. Terrastella had been her healing, had been her salvation and sanctuary.

When she turns to go, she does not fly. She does not disappear into the sky, fast and far and distant and wide. Samaira pushes out of the crowd, but though she doesn’t know where to go, she walks.

She had told Asterion that once, love had almost cost her her wings.

She cannot find it within her to fly now.

"Speaking."

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