this world is brighter than the sun; dempsey

[Oksana]

you taught me the courage of the stars before you left

how light carries on endlessly, even after death

Oksana had not expected anything from Dempsey, and even though she had flown to the Meadow, to the last place she had seen him, it had not been because she thought he would come find her. Still though, it would be dishonest to say that she had not considered what life would be like for their child (children, though she had not realized) if it was loved well by both parents. Of her children so far, only Malis had that, and even that love had been poisoned by Makai’s ghosts, splintered when he had left them. But Oksana wanted more for Isle and Wyck, more than her best, more than her everything. In coming here she had flung open a door for Dempsey, in coming here she offered him a choice.

So when he solidifies from the shadows nearby (she did not realize that he had been standing watch) she can feel a sense of satisfied relief blossoming within her chest. He touches her nose and she smiles, her breath warm on his skin. There is a part of her that is surprised he came, just a small part where doubt had wedged like a sliver and called itself reason. But there was an even larger part of her, a dangerous part, perhaps, that trusted him implicitly.

Okay, I’ll leap.

When he turns his back on her she is glad, because it takes a moment to hurry away the warm affection that shapes her mouth into a smile that reaches the quiet green of her eyes. It isn’t love, or not a kind of love she can make sense of, but it means everything that he’s here for Isle and Wyck.

She had realized it when Isle spoke, responding to words that had not even been voiced aloud. But it made her smile to hear it from Dempsey, to see them together, father and daughter, with a similar smile beneath the laughter on his lips. And then he turns to Wyck, her beautiful Wyck, and she can see that laughter quell beneath the softening of his expression. Mute. Her heart roars in her chest like a slayed beast, and it isn’t disappointment, not pity, but the fact that she might never hear his beautiful voice. Her eyes flash to Dempsey in that moment, realizing suddenly how much more it would mean now, whether he stayed or disappeared, and how desperately she wanted him to stay. How she needed him. And it is not until the last thought had formed and fled her thoughts that she remembered a crucial detail she had managed to both simultaneously remember and still overlook.

It was not just Isle and Wyck’s thoughts he knew, but hers too, everything from the moment he had appeared at their side from the shadows. She found his eyes once more, held them a moment, and as her heart quieted in its anguish she looked away again. Instead her attention returns to their children, and just in time to see Wyck’s frightened face peering back up at her.

Beside him, Isle drops her chin over his back and pulls him as close as their wobbly legs will allow. “What is mute?” Isle’s voice is small and imploring, and Oksana wonders if she already knows  but won’t say for the sake of not leaving her brother out of things.

Oksana’s wings shift into red feathers, downy soft, and one wraps around the twins to hold them close, to chase away the chill in the morning air. “Mute means you talk different than we do. You have to talk with your smile. With your ears, and your eyes.” Her lips brush each mentioned part of his head, her breath warm against his red skin.

oksana