She misses him too, the counterpart of her heart, the other piece of a soul torn in two. Time spent without him is time spent trying to distract herself, trying to discover who she is when she is not his Iri, his red and white shadow tucked into the crook of his shoulder and beneath wings as beautiful as a midnight sky. The hardest part was losing the rhythm of him, the beat of his heart and the thrum of life in his veins as he laid beside her in the dark for a millennium, before time found meaning in the light.

So she memorized the passing of his time, the stretch of day winding down into night, the moment when the sun slips beneath the horizon and into a bed of dark and twilight sky. And when she knows the time is drawing nearer, marked by her own dreamed up days and nights, she waits for him in whatever special place she’s built them. Sometimes she is left waiting for what feels like forever, but mostly he is there immediately, and she tackles him in a hug just as she does tonight.

“Indi!” She cries, and there is such easy love and laughter and radiant warmth in the quiet of such a gentle sunshine voice as she buries herself against him, leaned into his body and with her nose buried in his mane. She loves to breathe in the smell of his hair, to be tangled together like this until either deep sorrow or bright laughter pries them apart. But she is unwilling to be sad today, and she kisses his shining white with the soft of her whiskered lips.

“Are you tired, Indi?” She asks, her little tail waggling softly behind her in a way that she has not been able to shake, not even as her legs grow longer and her body more slender, time giving her expression a sense of newfound wisdom. Sometimes all they do is come here and lay together, a tangle of legs and limbs and gorgeous wings, blue spilling against red spilling against white. She doesn’t mind the quiet though, will always love laying beside her brother, this boy she loves so completely. But sometimes he isn’t tired, or he just pretends not to be, and they play for hours in a world she builds from both of their imaginations. Secretly, she’s hoping the latter is the kind of night he wants to have.