His magic thrums beneath his skin as the world collapses around them. It is nearly unbearable to focus on anything but the thrashing of it in the back of his mind, like a migraine getting ready to form, but he finds relief in her company. Relief from the grief and the curiosity and that nearly unrelenting pain of holding onto this power that has adopted him. He is nearly normal in these moments. Nearly entirely and wholly the boy he might have been before he was cursed. Before he was damned. Before everything.
Instead he gives her a roughish smile, something heartbreakingly similar to the one his father wore in his before, and he follows her west. He doesn’t point out that his gift could fold the distance like cloth for them to cross. He just opens the wings over his back, golden and dappled with his jaguar spots, and he follows her into the air. Magic does not bring innate talent and he struggles with the motion at first. It is not graceful or effortless, but he grits his teeth and tries anyway. Tries to emulate what he has seen her do and what he has practiced in the quiet of his own company. And he laughs when he shudders or falls.
Laughs when he finally lands, sweat-slicked and invigorated, body trembling from the effort.
He comes up her side and brushes his nose along her neck, feeling that heat pool in his belly, as the night sends his skin softly glowing. “What is the favorite place you have ever lived?” he asks as he bites along the curve of her neck, smiling into her skin. “I want to hear all of the stories you haven’t told me yet.”
so as our grief falls flat and hollow upon a billion blooded seas
all our worst ideas are borrowed (you do and don't belong to me)