Four words change everything. Only four of them to turn her whole world upside down - she knows because she can feel nothing solid beneath her feet, nothing at all and she’s falling through it soundlessly. But it’s okay, it’s okay, because it wasn’t a dream. Because that means this ache in her chest that she’s been buried under for years is real and normal and she isn’t crazy after all.
Isn’t in love with a dream.
It means that somewhere there are steady arms waiting to catch her and hold her close, and that’s good, because she’s still falling.
Heartfire barely has a chance to get her yes out before Luster is whispering a name that she has no idea means so much to both women. “Dovev.” She says, and it is so full of the ache of missing him, the ache born of all those dreams that aren’t dreams at all, that are instead memories dressed as dreams and she’s remembering that doesn’t make sense either. “But why can’t I remember? Why is it so hard?” Her brow furrows and finally a darkness reaches out to stroke cold fingers across the joy in her eyes, dimming it.
Because he hadn’t come to find her, and in years of quietly searching this wicked world for any sign of him, she had found none. They had promised their forevers to one another, promised their always because who else could ever be enough for her. Who could ever fill her heart, her spirit, like he did.
But he hadn’t come.
She feels a nauseous kind of horror when she turns her wild gaze on Heartfire, feels that weight like a rock in her throat, boulders in her chest. Because there is one good reason she can think of that he wouldn’t have come for her, wouldn’t have found her. “Is he dead?” The words nearly choke her, taste like bile and blood and sick, and she can hardly spit them out fast enough. Unless, oh god, please. Unless he couldn’t remember either, unless his memories had disguised themselves in the very same way hers had. Because a life without him would be like a living hell. A brand of pain burned into her brow again and again with every new, dark day.
Anything would be better.
“Please tell me he just forgot about me, tell me he isn’t gone.” Her head is bent now, eyes closed to hold back a pain she is sure is sharp enough to wound anyone who looks too closely. “Heartfire, please.”
