a mass of innumerable stars planted together - Spark

[Giver]

“If I want, I can make it grow brighter and hotter – it protects me,” he has never done it. Never even tried – has yet to sink his teeth into that strength and trial his own mettle. But he has always felt it – knew it to be so – in the way he handles that so-old energy around his skin. Always there is more and more – he can feel it give and take, a quintillion burning bodies feeding him at once. It is yielding, but powerful, to his muscles and mind, and he has played with the dimness of it by single lumens with quiet curiosity. 

He keeps it fragile and exquisite – for them.

(To don it like plated mail would be to make it a violent thing for those pulled too close to his gravity – defensive and angry in its heat. 

There is beauty in that too. But he had never needed it. He has never really known trouble.)

“It is nice, to be so close to them,” it is a precious thing to him. Otherwise they are so coldly distant, and while many are content for them to be so, he needs differently. He is impelled by them, at a cellular level – whether by something truly etched in his bones and poured in his blood, or by bindings of his own making (because somewhere along the way he had become convinced that they were keys, all of them, to many locks) – and so he can be contented only in the company of their miniatures.

“Spark…” 

It occurs to him, too late, to ask her where her mother is. His face grows dark, as it is wont to do, and his brow furrows (Alight always says he is too serious) – below them the earth gives a violent jerk and all around the land fractures and moans. His ears flick back and his stars fade as he lurches towards the girl.

“Spark!”

----

He is in starless dark. Taken. Plucked from his place (from her; how to find her again?) and thrown distances unimaginable and through galaxies innumerable.

Past constellations –

Two necks, curled together.

Horns curved back from a senseless face.

A witch’s claw, reaching.

Fire’s imitation.

When he awakens it is daytime. Leaden and dimmed by the upset, but through cracks in the dust he can see sun, harsh and close.

----

He runs, as naked branches whip his knees bloody – brambles pull at his chest, and they are so like claws. 

Where? He had scoured the mountain, but as he traced rock and dirt and rugged trees clinging to its sides, he could not find her. He wonders if they had perhaps passed each other by, she while he was in that endless dark – or he, while she was in transit, herself. Or if they had been brought to different precipices to face different gods.

Hopeless thoughts.

He followed that range’s spine until he could no longer bear the enormity of it.

If he is to find her, it would be where it began, or it would be somewhere in between. That place, he realized very quickly, was violent, inhospitable, and he could feel it corralling him downwards off its shoulders. So down, down he spiralled and flew, through reshaped land until he begins to see some semblance of familiarity. Somehow, by grace, the Meadow is as it was but for the snow and biting cold that punishes his unprepared body.

“SPARK!” His voice cracks as the cold constricts, he sputters and inhales, turning round and round.

@[Spear + Spark] - so it doesn't mess up your timeline/what you have already had her do post-cataclysm, you can totally interpret his searching the mountain as long as you need to. Like, hours, days, whatever. Also, if have already written what she was doing when it happened (and I'm sure you have.. shit, my bad, I did take way too long with this. Let me know, I can easily tie that end up.