THE MOON IS MY SUN
THE NIGHT IS MY DAY
THE NIGHT IS MY DAY
S
omewhere, somehow, he knows he has crossed a line. There is venom in her eyes, venom in her voice, and her blows against his chest startle him enough that he steps back, black wings withdrawing as if they’ve been burned by a girl who is a phoenix aflame.
The carefully woven facade he wears like a shroud slips from his face, if only for a second, as Caine struggles to comprehend the magnitude of his actions. The source of her inferno. Silver eyes, dilated with bafflement, fly to hers, and he almost flinches at the loathing that glows like embers from eyes gone molten.
"You say you have manners, but you don't even listen. No name given, cloaked in darkness, you think so highly of yourself don't you? Able to come waltzing in like some bastard prince.”
The insult barely even registers. Better a bastard prince than what he truly is. If she knew what he did, what he was... The books fall to the marble floor with a thump, and neither of them make a move to retrieve them.
Whatever he says, she scorns. Whatever he does, she flinches. It is the fear in her gaze that silences Caine, renders him motionless as his eyes flash like dancing blades. All of the knowledge the boy has ever known about human pain, human emotion, lays smoking like a candle extinguished. A bitter laugh aches to slip past his lips, as Caine marvels at his own ability to strike such fear in the heart of another — are his efforts at seeming pleasant, at seeming human, forever destined to fail? A monster cannot change its nature, Agenor had told him, before he had stripped him of his heart. And a monster you will become.
He is a statue of black marble as he watches her tears fall like crystals across her cheeks. You made her cry, a voice in him whispers, and a wave of — guilt? — slips its icy fingers down his rigid spine. It is not the first time, he responds, his impenetrable gaze shifting away from the girl’s distress. They always cry.
Yes, the voice says, but it affects you still. The illusions… they had helped. The illusions. The memories he had plucked from their minds like roses, and shaped into a haze of dreams to ease them into the arms of death. Had they helped?
“I can put them up myself.” Her voice, wobbling and hoarse, snags him from his thoughts like a jagged hook. A sigh streams past his lips, slow yet soft, as Caine looks back at her with eyes gone still. “Wait.”
His magic may be gone, but there is something else he can do. To show what he can never say.
Torn pages, scattered across the floor like autumn leaves, rise up into the air towards him. They settle in a pile on the table until just one remains in front of him, fluttering like a captured moth. Corners begin to fold together, the paper bending into halves and quarters and eighths, the seconds rushing past like sand in an hourglass.
One last fold, and a crane hovers in the air above them.
“Did you know,” he begins, looking almost fondly at his creation, “that if you make a thousand paper cranes, your deepest wish is granted?” Two winters ago, Caine had spent an entire night deciphering a scroll of foreign script he’d found behind a shelf. The legend it had told had fascinated him, the pattern drawn in black ink at the bottom eagerly replicated until his room had overflowed with the colorful paper birds. His wish had not come true; he’d never expected it to.
But it had shown him, that hands stained red with blood could still create things of beauty. And that had been enough.
Caine watches as the crane drifts lazily down like a feather. It lands softly on the oaken table. “If your wish is to be left alone, then only one of these should suffice.” His smile, when it comes, is dim.
“My name is Caine.” He looks back to the crane, a shadow across his eyes. "I never meant to frighten you."
Moonlight streams like a lullaby through the window, bathing them in liquid light. "Wish me to leave, and I will."
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