Things are sweeter when they're lost. I know--because once I wanted something and got it. It was the only thing I ever wanted badly, and when I got it it turned to dust in my hand.
P
ravda should not be surprised when he hears she has read of the Night Order. She spends as much time in Delumine’s library as he, and one of the many reasons she has captured his interest is due to the way she can be found in any aisle. She does not discriminate between fiction or nonfiction, history or science, poetry or romance. There are some, he has noticed, that she might favor—but when she says, I’ve read of them Pravda is, somehow, surprised. But he is not so surprised that he misses a beat in the conversation. He only keeps his eyes on the trail ahead, the stars above, the way the nighttime sings in a way more lively than some days. Sort of like—well, is your skin black spots on white or white on black?
Pravda glances at her. He is not prone to humor; but then again, he is not prone to starting moonlit walks with girls, either. “Black on white, if you must ask such personal questions.”
He wonders if the commentary—humorous as it may be—reflects something deeper of himself. Pravda does not tell her, but as they walk he senses Prigovora on the fringes of the night. He keeps to trees and the long, long grass and moves as quietly as death might, when a good humor strikes him. And Prigovora is a piece of Pravda.
Black, on white.
“But tell me, what do you think, Katerina? Did the moon chase out the sun, or the sun the moon?” Pravda turns to her, smiling slightly. The conversation has put him at ease and her own expression lightens him in a way he is unfamiliar with. Certainly, these emotions—the slight raising of his pulse, the flush that colors his cheeks with a kind of nervousness—certainly they must mean something.
Perhaps only that he is a fool.
Perhaps only that he is a fool, for wanting to reach out with a telepathic hand and brush back the hair from her eyes. Perhaps only that he is a fool, for wanting the stars and the night and the moon to stretch on endlessly above them, so that they might remain in that quiet moment long enough that nothing else may interrupt.
The world, Pravda knows, waits; it waits to come with some inevitable truth he has yet to learn. Happiness—happiness, blooming in his heart like a bird too quick to flight—has no place in truth.
