oh glory I'm a believer; exist, any

[exist]

while collecting the stars, I connected the dots.
I don’t know who I am, but now I know who I’m not.

She wades restlessly through a meadow of dirty white, past hills of snow gathered together by the wind and the miniature valleys carved out by innumerable hooves. Each stride takes her someplace new, unveils the silhouette of someone hidden behind a copse of trees or tucked around a mound of earth and white – and yet in her distraction, everything looks the same. Leliana, the ever-dependable pillar of calm strength that Exist had grown to rely on, her twin and the other half of her wandering soul, had not come home last night.

It had been strange to curl alone in the sand, to sleep without the symphony of beatings hearts matched in time, of chests pressed together and warm in the dark. But it was something that was always going to be, a distance that was the evolution of all living things. She knew this, she did, but it did nothing to ease the burrs in her chest or the scratchiness of eyes that could not find sleep in such unfamiliar solitude.

Blinking, she pauses, settling like warm copper within that blanket of unending winter, of eternal white. From the forest emerges a family of deer, all grace and elegance in way that makes her think of her sister again. With a pang in her chest she watches them pass at a distance, tracing their progression as she does the stars in the night sky. It is only when one of them pauses and turns, flashing the white belly of a small tail, and then continues on unperturbed that she notices the girl at all. Following the direction of the deers gaze, she can make out that faint glow of sunshine-gold around a smudge of dark in a world of bright.

It is curiosity that finally pushes the sleep from her eyes and the worry from her chest, curiosity that lifts her into a short, low flight on pale and tawny owl wings across the heart of the meadow. Landing gracefully nearby, Exist weaves through the snow, flowing like liquid copper and rust until she can pool in the shadow of this dark and glowing stranger. “Hello,” she says in a voice like trapped birdsong, light and lovely and full of sunshine, “I am Exist.”

In the ensuing silence she weaves ever closer, pressing the gleaming indigo of her nose to the satin warmth of a dark shoulder. Then, in a voice as soft as the snowflakes that still fall sleepily around them, “Are you alright?”

Exist