in the cold light of day we're a flame in the wind
not the fire that we've begun
I love you, Dawn.
The words carry softly over the inches between them, and Dawn feels something breaking and pulling away. She had faltered in using his childhood nickname, and it doesn’t escape her that for once he had called her just Dawn, not Dawny. They are embracing again, but through her tears Dawn couldn’t tell when he had stepped back into her arms, or when she had moved to drape her head over his withers, pulling him as tightly to her as she could.
She wants to respond to him, to tell him that she loves her Sunny more than anything else in the world, more than her bear, more than Hyaline, more than this stupid Cove; the words harden in her throat and she closes her eyes, fighting back more tears. Stop this, rings the voice in her head, the voice of her bear, and she draws in a deep breath, willing herself to calm down. Sunny is going through enough without her adding to it and making it worse.
And then, splitting the silence that has fallen: Come to Tephra with me.
She chuckles softly, though there is no humor in it, nor was there any humor in his suggestion. Come to Hyaline, you’ll love it here. Follow me to Tephra, I live there now and you should come see. And when you grow tired of Tephra? she wants to ask. Will you beg me to follow you to your new hunting grounds?
But the words will hurt him, and she has never been one to purposefully cause pain. So the words remain unsaid, locked away just as he had locked away his apology to her just moments ago. “Sunny,” she whispers finally, and her lips find a piece of his mane. She tugs on it gently, as they used to when they were foals, then lets the hair fall from her lips with a sigh. “You know I love you so, so, so much.” But. There is always a “but”, and Dawn is no exception to the unspoken rule.
“But you have Chryseis.”
The name drop should come as no surprise to him—she had known all of the names of his girlfriends, his flings—but she pauses as she gauges his reaction. “What would she think... if I followed you everywhere, from land to land, like a lost puppy?” The tears return and she does nothing to stop them as they roll down her cheeks, staining his golden neck. She shakes with sobs that she cannot harness, and briefly—only briefly—her shape wavers, her golden coat flashing to ice white and back, the bear trying to draw her in and protect her from her own emotions.
“I am not a lost puppy, Sunny,” she tells him, knowing that the time has long passed for her to pull away, but she is unable to leave his comforting embrace. She needs this, as surely as the ocean before them needs the power of the moon to control the tides, and his touch is something she cannot bear to lose. “I can’t come between the two of you; you two are like Hyaline’s lake at sunrise and I am but a small river feeding the pool in comparison.”
My love for you will never be enough.
Dawn
Hyaline's resident polar bear cub