She waits until she can see sleepiness in the lumbering strides of her beautiful children, until Dark comes tumbling over to collapse happily between her mother and Merry, a yawn contorting her beautiful face. She knows they’ll be exhausted tomorrow, but they can sleep if the need it. It felt important to let them play and enjoy the festivities of this beautiful island wonderland. There was no way to know if, or when, they would have the opportunity to do so again.
But she finds she cannot leave yet, that there is still a weight in her chest, a wound all purple and winged and trapped firmly inside her with ropes of regret. “I need to go find Kharon before we go, baby.” She tells Merry so softly, touching her lips to his little ears and smoothing the soft of his forelock out of his beautiful eyes. “I’ll be back soon.”
Then she’s gone into the clearing all awash with white and brilliant light, through the dancing bodies and the warm laughter. Kharon? Her eyes move from face to face, distracted by the flash of feather and wing - but no, those are all wrong. Kharon’s are more beautiful, the feathers bright and gleaming like sunshine captured inside the foam of a cloud even without her twilight magic. She smiles without meaning to, lost in a moment of picturing him again. His wings, his smile, the warmth in his touch. Her favorite shade of purple stretched through the white and pewter of his skin.
And then he’s there, sudden and beautiful as though summoned by her own stubborn will, and she pauses, taking in the beautiful motion of his body, of the way his mouth curls in such soft pleasure. He seems happy, and it makes her hesitate because she had come to make sure things were okay between them. To tell him goodnight and ask for once dance before she left. But he’s happy, and suddenly it feels so selfish to take him away from that, from something she had sent him away to find.
She smiles, and though it is etched in a shade of regret to not have been the one to make him smile and laugh like this, she is glad he found it anyway. Goodnight Khar, I love you.
