She doesn’t go to him at first.
And though she hadn’t missed the flash of light, gilding the Dale in its golden light for a full second, she can’t bring herself to seek out its source. He’s back, though, she knows. Her guardian angel, her protector and confidante, her own guiding light. He’s home after years away, and still she cannot bring herself to find him. Not at first, anyway.
Instead of the warmth of Tiphon’s side, she immerses herself in the darkness of her thoughts. They are more familiar now, a comfort to her weakened soul. The years without him had been torment. She had lost herself after Ramiel’s ascension. She knew what it meant – that Tiphon had found his release and way out, that he’d leave them for god knows how long once again – and it had shattered the peace that she’d spent years building. Fractured and spent (but also rebuilt and reborn soon after) she’d gone to the Gates. Where else might she find another angel but heaven? Not her angel, of course, but how easily she’d seen him in Jason’s face that night. She’d found Tiberios next, awash in her guilt for her transgression. He’d been that burning emblem he always had been. She thought about running away with him. She thought about taking from Tiphon what he took from her every time he disappeared: her eyes in a vast, foreign world, her breath in an airless space.
She missed him deeply and terribly.
But she changed in his absence, too.
New parts of her heart expanded in her grief, pressurized and inflated by his loss. She saw that stoic smile many times on their son, and she smiled in turn each time because it reminded her of him. When the sun rose after a stormy night and the sky was painted crimson and gold, she thought he had held the brush. It became, if not good, then okay. She strengthened and hardened against tears that never again fell. She forced herself from the shadows and became radiant with her gleaming skin once again. She realized that he hadn’t forgotten about them – that he would return like he always had – until finally he did.
But she stays away at first for herself.
Talulah can no longer be so dependent. Her happiness cannot rest squarely on the shoulders of one whose traveling wings already take up so much space. She’s already given him her heart, her promise of forever – but now, she keeps her happiness for herself.
When she does seek him out, it doesn’t take long to find him. He smells like the clouds, like spices on the summer breeze with a trace of lightning-sulfur. The metal woman drinks until she nearly drowns with the scent that she only now realizes she’s not forgotten. How could she? Talulah finds the crook of his shoulder. She curls into the familiar space, porcelain meeting silver, smiling at the way her body fits. But she’s quick to pull back. She allows herself only small steps, little tastes so as not to be blinded again. He is like a drug she once could not function without. Her gaze is hooded with all her new secrets, but still she’s smiling. “I have missed you every day.” And because it’s there, lingering like a melting sweet on her tongue, she adds, “Tiphon.”
t a l u l a h
metal woman of the dale