He walks in the land of mirrors, lost to his thoughts, lost to his dreams. Around him, they reflect a starless sky, hazy and shadowed like the thoughts which clouded his mind. For Azrael was lost. For several weeks he’d been like a ship at sea, simply drifting about without purpose or meaning. His body had been numb, his mind fraught with all manner of emotions – rage, shock, jealousy, grief. But most of all, regret.
For now, Azrael blamed himself.
If only the shed-star had spoken the words within his heart. Perhaps if she knew the way he dreamed of her, with stars in her mane and the sea at her back, Elena might have given herself to Azrael instead of sinning with the monk. Even now, the thought of Tenebrae lying with her was enough to sour his expression. He imagined the way the man’s lips trembled against her, the way their breath mingled as one, the way she opened herself to his touch. And all the while, Azrael cannot help but feel the twinge of jealousy as he wished their stolen kisses had been meant for him.
Find me again.
Her words echo in his mind. They drive him mad when sleep evades him, when his stars blink with each passing night as he turns from their shining light. In dreams, she comes to him, bathed in white moonlight with a promise of affection on her lips. It is his name she whispers breathlessly, his turquoise light awash on her instead of Tenebrae’s shadows.
But dreams were far from reality, the magician knew. In dreams, Azrael could wrap the outcome in any way he wished. There were no consequences, only fantasy. Not for the first time, he sighed away the hurt, marching onward through the world of crystal and letting wanderlust take him somewhere far from his own thoughts.
Here, there was only illusion which stretched for miles. Where once he had found endless starlight, Azrael now finds something winding and cold. Behind every turn, something new waits to be discovered – mirrors to another world or another dimension of time and space. Many hold no interest to the male at all, so he simply wanders past… but then Azrael comes to one crystal window which takes his breath away.
She watches him, pale as the morning sun, her eyes soft and pleading as they find his. A thousand thoughts jumble in his mind as Azrael struggles to name the emotion which twists within him. Part of him wants to turn from her, warring with another piece of him which longs to wrap her in his embrace. But he gives into neither, simply standing and staring at the her golden form while blinking quietly in disbelief, unable to move for fear that the illusion might shatter like the glass which held it.
take this burden away from me and bury it before it buries me
Five words change everything. Only five of them to turn her whole world upside down - she knows because she can feel nothing solid beneath her feet, nothing at all and she’s falling through it soundlessly. She should have known she would see him. Peering out at her from the shadows of the glass. Elliana’s father.
He is a wildfire, and he consumes her. She is breathless with it, shocked by how quickly it all comes flooding back—the way that he pulls her under, dragging her down with a weight around her ankles. She is here but she is not. She is younger and they are dancing by a bonfire. She is younger and he is pressing feverish kisses into her flesh in the chilled air of autumn. She is young and she is his. His.
But it’s not that time. It’s not, and she’s not the same.
And he isn’t either.
And this isn't real.
She was so pure, so clean, pristine in the way that only a newborn can be. It would not last, she knew this. She would never make it through the world unscathed. Everything about her blood, her creation, she was destined to become a think of shadows and darkness, she would break things or be broken. As much as Elena would try to protect her. Elena had felt an urge to hide her from the world, sharing her brought a pang of jealousy in her stomach. It is why she is on the island now, covered in mirrors, worlds she finds all too familiar and others she has yet to meet. But here, it is worth it, because here, Elliana is all her home. No one asks whose child she is, except Elena herself, but Elena’s only answer is mine, mine, mine.
She sees him, pushes off from the bottom of the lake and she sees him and she can breathe again. Something like a gasp tangles on her tongue. He had been upset with her, and she hadn't even needed to reach inside his emotions to know this. The aftermath of their last meeting had been bitter. A residual taste coats her tongue. “Azrael,” She says it hundred times, names every star in their sky after him, a series of low, uncertain sounds and quiet keening. She should not be here, coming before him like this. She doesn't deserve to ever see him again. Except, why, why does her heart hum like this for him, why does it grow wings when he smiles for her, why is she weightless when he is anywhere near her? If only he knew the way she cared him, of the way her heart fell apart and reformed in his hands.
Of the power he wielded.
Her reflection so matches the one that already sits there in the mirror world. Elena’s lips move and the reflection, and her, they both begin to speak, looking at the shed-star with china blue eyes. “Nights like this feel like a secret to be shared.” She breathes. “Here is mine,” she says and steps aside to reveal the little girl, so small she has not yet learned to talk, so small that she will never remember that this man before her is not her father, will not remember that once upon a time it was only her and her mother, if only because her monk of a father had no idea she even existed. “This is Elliana—my daughter.”
so take away this apathy bury it before it buries me
He stares at Elena, seeing the anticipation in her eyes with her unspoken ask and whisper of need. Pride keeps her from falling apart, even as those eyes, too expressive, betray her inner turmoil. He needn’t be an empath to know the lostness she felt – for Azrael had felt it too. For these long nights, he’d wished for her on every rising star. He’d longed for her touch like the desert longed for rain… and though he also was proud enough not to crumble before Elena in his lostness, Azrael knew he needed her too.
So he stands and waits, shifting in the uncomfortable silence as her voice makes mention of secrets and she steps away to reveal Tenebrae’s child.
Elliana is all the innocence he saw in Elena on the mountain, when they'd gazed at the stars long into the night. Her eyes are bright with hope and trust, her body unsure of its place in this new world. As he watches the girl, Azrael is lost for words. There is something of a marvel in the way Elena shares her daughter with him, as if he were the only one in the world that she trusted with such a secret. He didn’t know what to think of it, but as the doe-eyed child watches him, Azrael’s demeanor grows gentle. In that moment, the shed-star knows he cannot hold his own broken-heartedness against the girl. He knows that forgiveness would be enough. It had to be enough.
For a moment, he quietly takes it all in, his eyes falling on the mark of the Night’s Order on Elliana’s shoulder. Tenebrae’s mark – one which served as a stark reminder of oaths broken. Still too, it was Caligo’s mark. The irony of Elliana’s name is not lost on him – ‘my god has answered me’… for to the monk, the girl would be anything but an answer. Still, perhaps Elena’s child was an answer to Azrael’s search for meaning. He had to wonder if there was more in store for him, some ironic twist of fate which Caligo had planned.
“Elliana”, Azrael says at long last, his voice as smooth as it is strained with emotion. “Welcome to the world.” Memories flood him of his own childhood, devoid of a mother’s love, as he watches almost envious of the way Elena holds her daughter close with a protective embrace. This child would know love, he decided. Even through his own regret, Azrael could not begrudge affection for the girl. For her bright blue eyes betray her innocence, blissfully unaware of the man who gave her life, far from responsible for the actions of her parents.
She needed Elena’s loving touch, he decided – just as she needed Elena’s light. And so, in an achingly familiar gesture, the shed-star shrugged his own glowing obelisk from his neck, stepping forward to drape it over the child’s head, it’s turquoise light so like his own falling over her, chasing away the shadows.
take this burden away from me and bury it before it buries me
“You say that as though destruction is so easy to reverse,” Heartfire had said to her once. “Some things cannot be undone.”
Some things cannot be undone—oh how Elena knows—oh how Elena wishes it were not true.
That steady, searching look of his should not cause such a fluttering in her belly, such a tightening. But it does and she finds that it leaves her just a little breathless. She cannot bear to ask him, cannot bear for him to know all the ways that she has broken along the craggy rocks of empty love before—giving her heart to a man who would never have picked her first. Giving her heart to a man who had turned from her and warmed his bed with another while proclaiming all he needed was his faith. She had never been enough.
It almost causes the breath in her throat to catch, all of the ghosts crawling out and into her flesh, but his voice banishes them, opening the windows wide and letting the light pour in. At his voice, her heart leaps into her throat, and she closed her eyes against the shocking power of it. She tilts her chin up to him, watching the shadows cross his features, he is shimmering beneath the light this strange island offers. He is beautiful, she thinks, but it feels foolish to tell him this. It feels foolish to tell him that she feels more whole in his presence than she has in years, that he somehow manages to beat back her demons.
It feels foolish to admit this aloud.
His heart crumbles with hers inside her chest, feels the shattering, the splintering, but there is something else buried beneath their skin, and Elena feels brave enough to bring Elliana and herself forward. She was wildfires and ocean storms. He was stardust and twilight dreaming. Her eyes close once she is close enough to him, close enough to press herself into his side, she closes them long enough for seconds to bleed into years and eons, long enough for worlds to be born and die again, and only then do they open a million moments that somehow feel enough to fill an entire lifetime have passed by.
He says her daughter’s name and Elena cannot suppress any of the happiness that hits her golden face like morning sunlight. It feels so right coming from his lips. She would survive if he never spoke her name again, but she thinks she could not bare it if Elli’s name was not one he would hold. Elliana reaches forward and presses a heart kissed brow into his strong leg. A greeting for one who does not yet know words, but already knows how to trust and how to love. He wraps Elliana in a hold that father’s have given daughters since the beginning. Elliana knows nothing but her golden mother and this man that smells like stars, that tastes like dreams when she presses her lips into his skin.
She dreamt of him. So much. How many nights had she thought of this exact smell? How many times had she gone to sleep with his phantom touch, the warmth of his body pressed up against hers? It had been so pleasant; so unspeakably perfect. But each morning she had woken up and realized none of it had been real.
But now, now she could feel him. She wanted to curl up against him, but she did not feel like she could touch him. She wanted to whisper his name tell him how much she had missed him, how much she had thought about him, but the words were clogged in her throat, her tongue cemented in her mouth. She was underwater and she couldn’t breathe
And then she cannot hold herself anymore and Elena presses her own brow into the shed-star’s shoulder. “Azrael,” his name escapes her again, whispered like a confession into him. The emotions rise within her, confused and muddled and beautiful, and she struggles to pick them apart, to understand how quickly he has made her come undone. She asks something, and it is the kind of question she doesn’t really want answered, the kind of answer she supposes does not exist. But the lonely in her asks anyway. “Do you forgive me?”
She exhales softly.
Don’t break me, she wants to plea, but it is a silly, selfish thing to ask, so she folds it away. Instead, she just rests against him, inviting him into a glass home that has shattered so deftly before.
What has been destroyed cannot be reversed, Heartfire was right, but she can stand with her hand of sunlight pressed into his palm of stars and they can rebuild something more beautiful (like fire and dreams) across what has been broken.
so take away this apathy bury it before it buries me
In all his life, Azrael had never known the love of another. He had never felt the catching of breath in his throat while meeting a lover’s stare, or the way his heart could flip and twist at the most fleeting of touches. He hadn’t known what love could do to him – the way it could tear his heart right from his chest, the way heartbreak could turn his days to darkness and his nights to sleeplessness.
Until Elena.
Do you forgive me? It is a question he cannot answer, unsure of whether or not he could. A part of him wanted to forgive and forget, but another part holds back. It is the piece of him which is bruised and hurt by her choosing another. But it wasn’t Tenebrae she turned to now, even with his child at her side. No, tonight, Elena had chosen Azrael. Tonight was all that mattered, he decided, turning into her aching touch against him as his lips descended to her mane, drawing in her scent until he could drown from it. Tonight, she was his, not Tenebrae’s.
The child trembles at his side, and an emotion swamps the star-shed that he had never encountered before. It was some combination of wonder, responsibility, and fear. As if Elena trusted him with the most precious treasure in the world. His eyes are bright as he watches the girl, awash with his glow, absolute trust in her gaze. The moment is perfect, he decides, sighing and expelling the weight of several weeks of hurt with his breath. “Did you tell him?” He questions Elena, remembering their last meeting and his advice to her.
A man had a right to know.
Still too, Azrael questioned his own words now, selfishly wanting to keep the mare and the child to himself, away from the world which might open them to hurt. Here in their dreamscape, Azrael could keep them safe and his – but he knew this dream was far too confining for Elena’s wandering soul and the curiosity of the girl. “The shed stars raise their children together, with no one knowing their mother or their father, only the strength of the People. It is said it takes a village, but still too, I wish I had known a mother’s love and a father’s wisdom. Elliana will.”
His words are as much a promise to Elena as to himself, vowing in that moment to guide Tenebrae’s child as if she were his own. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the way I felt. I should have made sure you knew, Elena. The past is done, so now we can only look forward.” Her golden frame rests easily against him, close enough that he can feel the racing pulse of her heart as it beats in time with his. “No more words unspoken, Elena. I do not want to lose you. For too many nights, I have looked to the stars and seen nothing but emptiness… perhaps they led me here to you tonight, so we might have a second chance to get it right.”
Azrael’s lips hover in her mane, breathing slowly, half afraid the illusion might shatter as he questions. “So what now?”
take this burden away from me and bury it before it buries me
Elena had grown up wild, free, a honeyed spirit that did not know how the world treated such wild and free things, fearless little things. She did not know how the world captures them, butterfly in a net. How they watch the struggle, flutter those pretty wings, holding that net fast until that pretty thing, that wild thing, that free thing, finally stops its fluttering, tired, worn. And it takes the spirit away, reaching inside its heart, and it takes that beautiful spirit and tries to place it inside their own chest, only to have it die inside them. And now there are two dead things left.
And it started with a butterfly, a net, and the world.
She would keep her in this cocoon forever if she could. She would wrap her in the soft fabrics of forever, she would shut out the rest of the world and not lose sleep for a moment. She would stay in this dreamland, this island, with only the three of them. And she would let no net touch her butterfly, her daughter. But she knows that Elliana is destined to seek out so many beautiful flowers in her life, and it would be such a shame to stop her, all for the fear of a net.
She feels so many emotions slipping from him and onto her, but she doesn't want to feel them, doesn't want to know. For once, Elena wants to look at his face, at his eyes, his lips, and guess at what he feels inside his chest. And she finds those teal eyes with her own of blue. “Someone’s eyes are the closest you will ever be to seeing inside them, Elena.” Cherish told her once. And Elena believes her now, looking into him.
Maybe they knew each other before time began. When everything was just glimmering dust, floating about on cosmic winds. Maybe they were neighboring stars that yearned for one another and they stretched and stretched until they left galaxies in their wake. Until they became the North Star and the Sun.
“No,” she says, a single word. She folds Elliana into her as if she were hurt, but the only one hurt by this one syllable in Elena herself. “He chose his goddess—in doing that, he would never choose her.” Us, she wants to say, but doesn’t, because it doesn't matter now, she tells herself it does not matter.
The seconds seem like millennia.
The stretch and stretch and stretch—until she feels like surely her reality will snap and she will be sent spinning into the sun. She wonders if he will just turn around and leave. She wonders if maybe he will finally be done with her—she is so deeply done with herself—and just slip back into the shadows.
Maybe this was a fever dream after all.
But, eventually, she hears the sound of his breath so close to her. She feels the way that the air seems to be pushed by his presence. She swallows hard and glances up, feeling her heart trapped in her throat. When he is near her, she curls into him without thinking. It is instinctual and she cannot help but feel like it it drawing her first breath after spending so long underwater—so long drowning.
She cannot help but notice how easily Elliana fits in between them.
Her sudden inhale and exhale is heady and she closes her eyes. Everything within her twists tight around the feeling; everything within her nearly shatters with the relief. “Don’t apologize,” she says and it is almost a laugh. It is almost a broken sound as she presses in tighter to him, so hungry for the warmth that only he can bring. She smiles, all rainwater and fresh springs. “Azrael,” her name trips on her tongue in the sheer joy of seeing him, of being near him again. “Azrael,” she tests his name again, wondering at how it tastes like salvation, at how it soothes the rawness in her throat. “I feel as though I am a curse to you rather than a blessing.” She admits it. “I don’t deserve to have you so close to me after all this time,” she says.
What now? He asks.
“We stay here forever.” She says.
“Or until the sun rises.”
A story begins, one she has not come to an ending. One that keeps going, page after page after page…
so take away this apathy bury it before it buries me
Azrael cannot know what Elena is thinking, but he can guess that the emotions in her are just as convoluted and confused as his own. There would be hurt – feelings of loss and abandonment – for though the shed-star didn’t fully understand or want to imagine their love for one another, he knows Elena must have loved Tenebrae to have given herself so fully to his touch. There would be regret, guilt, loneliness… these too, he had felt for far too long. But he felt something else – hope. Would she feel it too? Could she let go of the hurt and heal alongside him? Hope was his only salvation in the matter.
The shed-star finds it curious, that Tenebrae had chosen ‘his goddess’ over Elena. He doesn’t remind her that Caligo is his own goddess too, that his people were blessed and called descendants of Caligo herself. But then, Azrael had never been as pious as a monk (or at least as a monk should be). Instead of taking an oath of chastity, he had walked with Caligo in dreams, looked upon her face, smiled as if they shared a secret only they would know. Unlike Tenebrae, Azrael got the distinct impression that their goddess would wish them happiness. And Elena made him happy. He would never feel the need to walk away for the sake of religion. Religion would simply bring them purpose as they walked through life together.
She says she is a curse to him, which he vehemently disagrees with – but the shed-star knows too that arguing would do no good. So he simply pulls her closer, watching Elliana with a warmth he didn’t feel was possible to project on another’s child. It was a bit ironic, he mused – for Azrael had never pictured himself as a father. Sure, there had been moments where he’d wondered what it would have been like, having a father to guide him through the confusions of life… but he’d never seen himself in the role of teacher and guardian. Now though, it felt more natural than ever, and something akin to pride fills pieces of him he’d never known were empty, watching the way Caligo’s light fell over the child born from sin… as if the gods themselves forgave the monk’s transgression.
Instead of turning from Elena, he pulls her closer – with his words and his touch. “We have tonight, but there can be many more like it… nights where we can lay beneath the stars, or along the sea cliffs. Perhaps in the morning, we can go… the three of us… together?” The suggestion for them to leave as a family unit hangs heavy between them, as Azrael holds his breath, unsure if she would accept him in her daughter’s life in the way Tenebrae could never be. Whatever wrongs had come, they would be righted… they had to start anew, to find their peace one more.
And Azrael would help her to put the pieces of her heart together once more, if only Elena would let him into her world.
take this burden away from me and bury it before it buries me
She cannot bear to tell him the way her heart splits at seeing him again. All she can do is stand before him, blue eyes pained, and hope that it’s clear that she is here with him. That she made a choice for him, for her daughter, their daughter now, for a life and a family that she has always wanted and somehow still feels impossibly out of her grasp. She hopes it is clear that she would not be here, would not be here with Elliana, if she did not believe in him whole heartedly. Because while Tenebrae was as fleeting as shadows, Azrael was always as bright as starlight.
And hope blossoms in her—
If only because he was able to plant it within her.
Each pin prick of his emotions is read by the empath. And she practically crumbles on the spot when she can find no fleeting emotions of hatred, resentment because he of all people deserved to feel those things towards her. She wants to tell him to hate her, to despise her, to never forgive her, but he quiets her thoughts as she is pulled closer to him, and only then does her heart still. Elliana moves between them, not to separate, but to find how she fits between the two she will call her parents. And the fit, they find, with Elli in the middle, is perfect.
Together.
It easy to let everything fall to the wayside in this moment.
In this bright and shining moment, the pain and the fear and the agony strips away, curling from her like the edges of bark peeling from the tree. She is left new in its wake, molded into something restored by the way his heart beats against her, and she wonders how she would have survived without him. He has shielded her heart. He has fortified her spine. He has helped her make this a family, has become such an essential core in both their lives now.
Her eyes brighten slightly, the tears washing away, leaving her face soft and clean.
“Together, a family,” she murmurs, pressing her head into his embrace once more. And together, they settle in, because Elena is still not ready for the outside world, although it does not seem so daunting with him beside her. They settle in and Elliana closes her eyes, but Elena’s stay blue and open for a moment longer. “Promise me,” she says, her heart trembles only once as she moves closer to him before stilling, as he was always so easily able to do. “Even if you ever want to leave me, please do not leave her.” And she folds her head against him, hoping she would see him again as she closes her eyes, hoping if he chooses to dream walk he would pick hers to wander in.
so take away this apathy bury it before it buries me
For all the light in the heavens, Azrael could not have found the peace he finds now in Elena’s embrace. She is warm and vibrant against him, even as her heart finds itself broken and conflicted, healing with every brush of his lips against her, chasing away the darkness of Tenebrae’s shadows with the tenderness of his touch. He marvels at the way Elliana fits between them, his light shining along her sealy-brown chest, engulfing her in the magic of starlight which even Tenebrae’s darkness could not extinguish. It is this turquoise glow against her which is the symbol of his hope, and the stallion can barely contain a smile which edges at his lips as he buries them into Elena’s mane, dragging the scent of her into his lungs as if he could never get enough of it.
They might have stood like this for minutes or hours, time losing all sense of meaning in the strange world of mirrors and fates, his sigh the only sound to meet the emptiness as it mingled with her assurances. Together. she offers, and it is enough.
Promise me, she whispers, and he scoffs at her next words. “Have faith, Elena… for I have no intention of letting either of you go again… how could I leave you when I’ve waited for you my entire life. When I’ve dreamed of you, and you alone… I am yours for as long as you will have me.” And they stand together, while night fades to morning, the first brush of color edging away his stars with a renewed sense of hope. For though they might be broken, their family would grow stronger together, would heal together.
“Come then,” he urges, stepping toward the light of the outside world, away from the magical island which had reunited them once more. “For in the light, we can find our way once more.” And he leads the girl of sunshine and her child from the darkness and toward home again, hope renewed and burning as strongly as Elena’s light, prepared to face the world together.
![[Image: ddvotwe-59302ba6-6a81-47bf-9846-30c5a5db...0iFb4PvyXE]](https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/8026a53b-dc57-41ab-b574-9f8a8fe57ce4/ddvotwe-59302ba6-6a81-47bf-9846-30c5a5db0780.png?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzgwMjZhNTNiLWRjNTctNDFhYi1iNTc0LTlmOGE4ZmU1N2NlNFwvZGR2b3R3ZS01OTMwMmJhNi02YTgxLTQ3YmYtOTg0Ni0zMGM1YTVkYjA3ODAucG5nIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.ujCJH7FAbsQhfZlQniMmEd_vw-VmvaTDn0iFb4PvyXE)
