Her touch is transporting, even before they move.
Like velvet, her muzzle brushes the stubble on his chin. He leans into it, notices the way his bright forelock falls over his eyes when he does. Like a flag I’ve earned, he remembers, smiling faintly. This time, he’s truly earned it. This time, he won’t drown in the sap of the pines he pulled back into every time rather than waking her in the night. This time, he won’t fuck it up for either of them.
The stars spin quicker above them, falling and fading into the pink birth of a new dawn. It is as if they’ve come to roost in her eyes, to refuel and borrow some of her fire until the next night. He realizes that he will not be alone this next day. As the sun claws its way out of the earth, reaching across the heavens with its orange fingers, he will not greet it by himself. Realization comes in the form of a quick smile and tightening of his gut. She has stayed her traveling feet; he is so grateful. (Will they keep quiet and rooted forever? Can they?)
She kisses him and darkness swallows them up.
It is a familiar lurching in his stomach. A loud whoosh fills his ears as grains of sand pepper his body. He braces phantom wings against nothing before he remembers. When he can see again, he is amazed but not surprised. Amazed, because Djinni takes them to the place he had occupied in his mind only moments (and meadows) ago. Dawn picks up where it left off, fiery streaks rising from the water instead of the earth. He is not surprised, however, because they’d done this lifetimes before. She had transported him but her burden had been easier, then. Now, she carries parts of him that hadn’t existed back then.
She tells him to stay. For the stupidest second, he hears it wrong. He thinks she means to leave him here (he’ll get his sunrise away from the meadow, but he’ll get it alone). But then it clears away. Walter thinks on it for more than a moment. He doesn’t mourn the man they left behind, the man who died with the old world. He decides to forget the insecurities that had kept his own feet moving for far too long when they already knew where they belonged. “Nothing would make me happier,” he finally tells the genie, the salt wind rising his mane. “It’s a far cry from the Chamber, I’ll give you that.”
Walter
come down from the mountain
you have been gone too long