Larke is a quiet girl and she grows shy beneath his glowing presence. He tucks a wing over her and she just smiles a little to herself, curling into his side and wondering at just how right it feels to be there—at how right it feels to have his warmth next to her. At his suggestion that she stays forever, a laugh escapes her like sunshine. It is bright and warm and all of the features on her turn to a light golden glow.
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” her silvery voice is light and low. It never crosses the line into delicate but is like her mother’s: calm as the river, steady as the rain. Even her inflections are subtle, and when she tips her head up to look at him, her sage green eyes are soft and kind and just a little struck with wonder.
“Forever is such a long time.”
She has no real concept of it, even with morality slipping through her bloodstream, but she knows that it is long enough that her family would miss her (and she would miss her family). She would miss spending lazy afternoons with Chronos, or teaching the newest members of the family all of the nooks and crannies around Tephra, or just walking amongst the flowers with her mother as she teaches her how to heal.
But she doesn’t share these secrets of her heart (rather, she thinks that she doesn’t). Instead, she just tucks it away and turns her attention back to the task at hand of finding his sister. She nods when he gestures toward the trees and doesn’t think twice about following him. As they move forward, he asks her a simple question and she would blush if she understood the meaning behind it—the meaning of the word.
She is silent for a second, trying to piece together what it means.
At first, her mind goes to her sweet Midnight. He was, other than her brother, her closest friend and her dearest companion, but her boyfriend? They had never used that word before.
She hadn’t even heard it before.
So she does the only honest thing she knows. She shakes her greying head and smiles.
“No, I don’t think so. Do you?”
as the vale in whose bosom the bright waters meet