so we let our shadows fall away like dust
It breaks something inside her to watch him track the fingers of dark disappearing into the sand, rivulets of shadow reflected back at her from the worried furrows in his cheeks. Even when it’s gone, bound up tight and locked away so deeply inside of her, he still looks for it, still tenses when she reaches the water. It is enough to make her stop, hesitate and watch him with eyes that are both dark and luminous, heavy with more regret than she knows how to name. “You can trust me.” She says finally, quietly, voice sad and silver, molten when it spills over such soft, sweet lips. It isn’t a command, she isn’t telling him to trust her, telling him he must. It is another promise, an easy one to make, a vow that he can if he wants to, because she knows this moment will be with her forever. His fear – was it fear – his wariness, bound tightly to the magic in a way that nothing could ever undo.
It is only when he does not turn and disappear that she slips forward again, easing close enough to curl beneath his neck and paint quiet, sorry kisses over every inch of his face, his throat, his rigid chest. “I’m sorry.” She says again, so quiet, so heavy, tracing the cords of rippling muscle that lay like snakes beneath the even black. With tongue and teeth and gentle lips, she works at the tension in him until it finally fades, pushing at the rigid knots and leaving kisses in the soft places, the sensitive places.
I’m yours. She promises, reminds him, commits herself to him in a way that feels so strangely, dangerously easy. But maybe it wasn’t so strange at all, he was what had drawn her to this place, he was why she was willing to make a home out of Sylva. That is probably why the words come so easily, the submission of herself to him, because they are just words, just sounds, and it felt like she had already shown him as much by returning here to him.
She was his before she had ever left the cave.
She kisses his mouth and finally, finally, he shifts to accept her touch, shifts his head so that he is kissing her back and in a gentle way. She is breathless at once, soft and sweet and so eager beneath him, leaning into his touch as though she is deepwinter experiencing sun for the first time. He pulls away and for a moment she is afraid he’ll stop, afraid he’ll disappear beneath the smooth waters around them, but he only moves to run his mouth along her jaw and to her throat, pressing closer in a way that makes her wish he would crush her to him again.
“Stillwater.” She says, whispers in that breathless way, lifting her head and baring her throat to him at the urgent pull of his suckling lips. He moans and she matches it in her soft way, unafraid when he pulls back from the wild flutter of her racing pulse to demand that single, strange word. Cut. Wordlessly she peers up at him, reluctant to call on her magic again, but some combination of the sound of his voice after so much quiet, of his need and her need, of the aching way he watched her makes her do it anyway.
She calls on the light this time instead, the glint of day-stars created by the pockets of light reflected back from the surface of his lake. They lift from the water and float to her like wayward fireflies, melting together to form a blade, a jagged piece of light that gleams bright and iridescent like a shard of glass. When she holds it to her skin, there is just an instant of worry, a flicker of uncertainty that tangles itself in the dark of those solemn eyes before the skin pops soft and damp and red against the edge of a blade that disintegrates to stardust in the next instant.
She gasps, a soft, surprised sound, eyes widening at the sting even though she had been expecting it. She meant to hide it from him, those wide eyes, the tightening of muscle around that pale, delicate mouth. But it slips past even as she presses herself closer to him, seeking the heat of his kisses, of his mouth to erase the knot in her chest.
