you pour the water —

Perhaps it is better for them to engage in these half-truths with one another. These half-truths that are folded into lies. They give each other just enough to promise that it’s not a complete falsehood. Just enough to be believable, but they soften it. They pretend his tragedy is fun, even though the discuss the tragedy itself. They pretend she is making sense when she can barely keep her emotions straight.

And perhaps that is the way it is meant to be.

Perhaps it is the only way things can be.

So she doesn’t call out the strangeness of their interaction or question him when he smiles and lies with his eyes about the game he plays. And she smiles in return when he tells her that what she is saying makes sense. Even if what he says makes sense, in its own way. “We do,” she affirms and then questions herself again. Did the night choose her? Did the darkness? Or did she chase after it? Did it matter which was the pursuer in the end? Or was the only thing that mattered the end result. Who she was.

She smiles, rolling a delicate shoulder and glancing up to confirm that it was indeed still night and that they had several hours to go before he would have to play his game once more.

“So what would you like to do?”

A gentle question spoken from a gentle mouth.

“We have some time left.”

— I would haul the stones

you pour the water —

Is it kinds for her to stay? Is it kindness for her to want to be there when the sun hits him and strikes him down? To hold him in a place of stone? She isn’t certain. There is an oily uncertainty in her belly that it is selfish and wrong for her—that she is staying for the wrong reasons. There there is a darkness in her that is drawn to such terrible things and that she has a gift for masking them behind a pretty smile.

But she is too weak to suss out the truth so quickly.

Too weak to face such demons just yet.

So she smiles at him and dips her head and follows his gaze to look at what captures his attention. When it lands back on her, she does her best to not fidget or shuffle her wings or try to draw his gaze anywhere else again. She just stands pinned beneath it, hoping that he doesn’t see more of her than she offers.

“I haven’t,” she answers and it is mostly honest—mostly the truth. She has wandered through much of the trees and shadows but it is usually when she is deep in thought. When she barely knows where her legs are taking her. She hadn’t been paying attention then and so she feels little guilt over this white lie.

She tips her head to the side in consideration.

“Would you show me? I’d like to see the good here.”

— I would haul the stones

you pour the water —

If he doesn’t fill the silence, then she certainly feels no urge to do so. She is content to sit in the quiet, to walk alongside him and let the rest of the world fill up those spaces where they do not. She is grateful, in a way, that he does not chatter at her—does not force such conversation upon her. Baptiste is such a quiet, serious girl that she is not certain that she could handle such a thing. Not certain she would allow it.

(Would she run? Would she just end the conversation? She’s not sure.)

But he doesn’t and thus she says. She walks idly, tail flicking behind her, her wings folded gracefully over her slender back. Every once in a while, her rose gold eyes slide to him and she studies his young profile, wondering what exists beneath the surface. Once or twice, she thinks that she might feel something. A whisper of emotion that is not her own. Something that feels alien. But she tells herself it is imagined.

She could not possibly know what he is feeling.

Could not possibly pick up on such things.

It is only when they come to the place where he leads that she says anything at all. Her eyes widen with youthful wonder, a glimpse at the girl she was made to her perhaps, and she steps forward into the dancing lights. Her nose lifts and she closes her eyes in pleasure as they dance around them.

“It’s like magic,” she whispers under her breath. “Absolute magic.”

— I would haul the stones