Archive of Our Own

Melinda shuffles the cards, her motions fluid, mesmerizing as each card catches the light, a glimmer of gold and pink and purple catching the gleam in a stream of iridescence. Yor watches, like a child, awestruck, would watch a magician – mouth agape, hands entangled, heart pounding as she waits patiently, hopefully, for an answer to the question she asked – when will the nights feel less lonely, when will the songs start to feel like an embrace?

It's a question that has always rung true to her – when the nights have become dreary, when the lights have become blinding, and the sights have become a blur of turpentine against a canvas that forgot its purpose. A picturesque life in the limelight, overshadowed by the want to be held, to be desired, to share conversations without needing to fabricate, to hide; where she’s just Yor Briar, and she is not this woman in glitter and gold and roses. Where she can be just… her.

Yor is unsure when the questions have started echoing, reverberating in her mind; she had always been so sure that she was fine with the lonesome nights, and the changing sights, but then, there had been that one night. A stroll down the river underneath the stars when the camera flashes have gotten too bright like lightning, and each fan chant sounded like thunderstorm before the rain. The wind was cold on her glittered skin then, a brush on the shoulder as she spotted the couple, hand in hand, lost in the galaxies of themselves, entirely spun in the silver of their own world. The want settled then, the desire, like an ache at the pit of her stomach that had always been there, but never felt – something that ebbed through to her, and had taken root like a claw. And since then – since then she had wanted to be wanted, to be the center of someone else’s universe without loving her for this superficial version of her under disco lights, and confetti.

Since then, she has been asking Melinda to read for her, to search for the stars for the love that might be in the darkest corners of the universe. And Melinda, even as a wife of a politician who seems more in touch with the planets than earth, sweet, sweet Melinda, she indulges her every time, in every corner of the earth.

The shuffling stops, and a card peers through – a woman underneath the stars, and kissing the stream below her with her touch, basked in cerulean. Melinda takes it with her svelte fingers, and slides it across the table with a fluidity that reminds Yor of a river flow – elegant.

“The Star!” Melinda exclaims, her tawny eyes golden under the amber of the lamplight, the gaiety in her features apparent as she glances over at Yor with that warmth she always has for her. “And, it’s upright.” She nods, and she is shuffling again.

Yor watches her like she would a skilled dancer, trying to learn the steps, and committing it to memory. It is a blur, each shuffle, each card that is being stacked over and over before something spills over as though something has tugged it loose. Two cards slide over the table like silk over silk, a flutter of quiet that stares up at her – a skeletal knight with a black flag on a horse, and the other a man dressed as a pauper with a golden cup filled with water standing before a beach. Yor tilts her head, eyebrows raised – Death and the Page of Cups.

She blinks at it, tries to make sense of it as Melinda stops, and places the cards by the shiny packet it came with. She flashes her a smile as she tucks a brown tendril of her hair that has gotten loose behind the shell of her ear, the rings with differing crystals catching the light as Melinda takes in the three cards she pulled, and exhales.

“The Star, Death, and The Page of Cups all in upright – oh this is delightful,” she exclaims as she joins her hands together, effervescence bubbling through, vibrating to the point that Yor feels it even if they are sitting across another. Melinda takes it in for longer, glances at each card as though she is mulling over each meaning before lifting her gaze back to the singer. Yor sees the light in her amber eyes disappear, her shoulders deflate and hunch in on another as flush litters the apples of her cheeks, a dust of pink she usually carries when realization dawns upon her. She juts her lip. “I have no idea what they mean though.”

Yor watches Melinda shake her head, and she reaches over to touch her arm in a reassurance, a genuine smile painting her face like the final touch of a masterpiece on a canvas. “It’s okay; you’re doing just fine,” she says as she squeezes Melinda’s arm for good measure, and then moving to touch the cards as if they are treasure. “I think this might be a good omen.”

“Well,” Melinda starts as she takes the Death card in her hand, and runs a thumb on the knight’s face surreptitiously. “I guess just watch out for anything so you don’t die tonight?”

Yor pales at that, and jolts awake as though electrified, eyebrows raising close to her hairline, ruby eyes widened, scandalized. “What? – What do you mean?” She questions, her stomach suddenly feeling tight, and the makeup heavy with sweat.

Melinda blinks at her in panic then waves it away with a hand and a wispy chuckle. “I’m sorry – I’m not very good at this. Uh, but there will be stars! Oh, and someone might offer you a cup… of water?” She tilts her head, perplexed by her own reading before she is tucking it away with nervous laughter that sounds mystical, even when it is filled with question. Maybe that’s the reason why.

“You’re doing great!” Yor reassures just as a makeup assistant approaches her with glitter, and foundation for a quick touch up – two minutes; two minutes before the pit in her stomach, before she is Thorn Princess and not Yor Briar, before she is a stranger with high hair and stars in her stockings. “So, essentially, avoid death, focus on the stars, and watch out for someone to give me water.”

“I guess!” Melinda beams with conviction, and somehow, something tells Yor that it might very well come true.

Super Trouper filters through the quiet halls of the hospital – the tenth rendition of Thorn Princess’ song for the day, and it is only eight in the morning. The chorus a chorale of longing, and yearning through blinding lights that resonates deeply within him, like a siren call to a lonesome sailor looking for conversation and a kind hand. He feels the quiet thud in his heart, that flutter that always seems to come whenever her voice reaches a certain timbre, when the melodies seem like they come from an angel’s, and it strums the strings deep within the wells of his heart.

He presses the heel of his hand against his sternum, feels the song echo there before he is adjusting himself on the chair that he has been occupying since six in the morning. His lower back smarts at the movement, his spine crying out as he flattens his hand against the research paper he has been going through. A migraine settles at the base of his neck, a dull thing than anything persistent, permeating like a pack of ice against skin, quiet before the resounding pain that usually haunts him when he has had too many letters to audit, and caffeine to chase it away.

Loid whistles out a sigh, the fifteenth exhale within the hour, and he tries to find solace in the way the melodies carry him in a pillowy embrace with just the resonance of her voice. Warmth filters through, electrifying as though he can taste it in the air, the strums of the guitar his heart strings, the sound of the tambourine its beating, and her voice his salvation that speaks so deeply in his soul. The stress of the early morning is bid farewell as his mind centers in the way she elongates the words, and shapes them into her, into a comforting  chirrup that stirs something in him, within him. It permeates – touches the darkest corners of him that has grown cold, reaches with her high notes, and plants seeds there where flowers can bloom.

He feels his fingers tingle, the hairs in his skin stand in attention. He can’t explain it – this feeling, this sense of belonging by just listening to a song of an artist, this certain unlocking that rushes through to him like a cold stream of water in an exceptionally warm evening.

He does not know when it started, either – when this all started to click, when things started to shift, to make sense. It just happened, like someone snapped their fingers, and he suddenly found music something he can divulge the deepest parts of him to. A devotion that is inexplicable, exciting in a way despite the cyclical melodies, the same words sung. Like being sung into a trance, and yet despite spellbound, he is in motion, living in the sound of her voice, fueled by the lilt of each high note, each riff. Completely wrapped around the themes of her, in the rubies in her eyes, in each micro expression as she sings.

Perhaps – perhaps, it is a problem. This co-dependency, this projection of survival into a siren that does not even know his name, and as a psychiatrist, the best one in his field in both Westalis and Ostania, he should have known better. And, yet – and, yet, alas, he does not. He is simply a man, and he is calling to her to soothe the ache in his bones plagued by the never ending requirements of his career.

She is nicotine, and alcohol all at once – and while Loid has never had any vices that stood too long to be a problem, she has become his vice, and each song she sings is a drag of a cigarette and a burn of whiskey down his throat. A catharsis that can only be felt when he is listening to her. Sometimes, he thinks, when he is deep in the well of his yearning, he might as well inject her into his veins.

Loid huffs out another sigh, one that comes from the cavities in his heart just as the door opens, and Sylvia steps in – the red in her hair gleaming, and so does the sharpness in the grey of her eyes behind her lenses. She walks towards him, each stride with purpose as her graze momentarily flits away from him and to the recorder, spinning the same song for the past two hours. She makes a face that immediately dissolves itself like sugar in tea, and takes a seat by the chair juxtaposed his desk.

“Good morning, Doctor Forger,” she says, her tone crisp, yet hidden by the song that has been playing on repeat for the past couple of hours, much to the chagrin of everyone near his office, specifically, Nurse Fiona. She gestures for him to turn it down, and counts to three before she sees the way Loid deflates and mutters something incoherent underneath his breath. She lets it pass.

Loid takes the needle off the vinyl, and the music stops, so does his mood, plummeting in that abyss of despair when it is not pillowed by her voice. Maybe he is being dramatic, but he does not care, not when he is hunched over documents and consultations at least eighteen hours of the day. Sylvia watches the shift, and makes no comment on it, only slides the envelope across like a bribe. Technically speaking, it is.

“Director,” he nods as he takes the envelope from the paper he had been reviewing before she came in, and lifts his gaze – questioning – to meet hers with a raised brow to accompany it. “What is this?”

Sylvia crosses her arms against her chest, and looks past his shoulder, to the window that is preventing most of sunshine to spill into his office. “Tickets.”

“Tickets?” He asks as he opens the unsealed flap, but keeping his gaze level to her. “Please don’t tell me this is another out of field consultation,” he says with a sigh heaved from his chest, the idea already making him nauseous. The last time he had been sent to one, the client became too comfortable.

Sylvia shakes her head, the gold hoops around her ears catching the light. “It’s tickets to Thorn Princess’ two-day concert in Berlint.”

Loid perks up, a sheen of pink dusting his features that he tries to discipline, his fingers itching to take the tickets out of the confines of the envelope and confirm what his boss is telling him. He tries to school his features even when it feels like flowers blossomed in his chest, and sunshine bled through him. “Is… Is there a catch?” He tilts his head, brows furrowed.

Sylvia looks offended, a scoff escaping her lips. “No, I just thought it’s about time we reward our best employee by giving him tickets – “

“You were scolded by the board for overworking your staff, weren’t you?”

Sylvia waves him away, and frowns at the smirk that he has plastered on his face. Another scoff escapes her lips, the huff short-lived, and followed by another as she struggles to find the words to counter the truth. She was, in fact, scolded. “No – I. Just take the two days off,” she says abruptly as she stands from her perch, and begins to walk away, offense sitting squarely on her shoulders.

Loid grins – too brightly as though the sun had found its way in his office, and replaced him. “Thank you.”

“Have fun,” she says, her hand already turning the knob of the door. “But not too much fun. And, please, turn down the volume of your music. I just had it with Nurse Fiona’s noise complaints,” she adds, and makes a motion to rub her thumb against her temple before disappearing behind the door with a click.

Loid feels his heart stutter, and the excitement settles in his bones like liquid gold. He’s been trying to get these tickets for a year with no such luck, and now –

Now, he gets to see the woman who saved him from himself.

The sky opens in a hush of indigo, the blooms of purple chasing away the cerulean, the tangerine fading with the sun as it paves way for the moon – the final curtain call for the afternoon, as evening makes its descent, and blankets Berlint in an embrace of stars. The concert hall is littered with men and women with their flashing lights, banners, and chants – bodies pressed together, perfume and sweat united, excitement laid bare like an offer to a goddess. Yor raises her chin upwards and kisses the sky littered with stars, and resigns herself to Thorn Princess, to the woman who embodies confidence like glitter is her second skin, and the blood that pumps in her veins.

The lonesomeness disappears, and so does the electrifying touch of anxiety as she lets the night air wrap her in an embrace she knows too well. The encore is loud and warm, and she smiles like the world knows no sorrow and everything is limitless if she reaches far enough, stretches far enough with the tips of her fingers. The sound of the drum resounds, the tambourine somewhere behind her, and she sings like she is someone else, like she is the goddess divine and the cherubs behind it – her voice trilling and touching areas where darkness had thrived, illuminating each path.

Confetti is everywhere – in the smile of the crowds, in the blinding stage lights, and in the glimmer of gold and red. She sways her hips like the music is swaying her, the flow silken as though she is weaving herself in the musical notes, in the throngs of each treble clef written so elegantly on staff notes that stream like rivers. They scream for her, her name in their lips, and it is saccharine in their honeyed tongue as she paints them a picture of grace and joy.

“All I do is eat and sleep, and sing,” she sings, her voice a lull that sparks that lonesomeness that belongs to Yor Briar, the ache at the pit of her stomach as though she, herself had serenated her own siren.

It clutches onto her, like a knife behind her back, and Yor quiets it with a dainty hand against the blade as she lets the music carry her. The rubies in her eyes are oceans of rose petals, and she latches them on to each face that are nameless and faceless all the same, trying to temper the storm within her borne by her own lyrics woven from the cotton hold of her yearning.

“Wishing every show was the last show,” she tunes herself out, even when her heart is whispering sweet nothings that should belong to a lover, edging her on as she clutches on the slender handle of her mic shaped like a stiletto.

Is this what Melinda meant when she said she will meet her death tonight?

Yor does not know, but the cacoethes that fill her feel a lot like it, and it burns and scalds her as she tries to sing the song she’s sung too many times, but has never found anyone to find purchase on, to find solace in. A love song to no lover.

“So imagine I was glad to hear you coming,” a set of lyrics for no one, that is, until, blue eyes stare back at her with a knowing that catches her breath, and suddenly, suddenly – “And suddenly I feel alright.”

A smile teases her lips, the first genuine one that is entirely Yor Briar as she walks closer to the edge of the stage with a renewed rhythm, and a heart that feels like it is calling out to her. She takes a breath, a drink of fresh air that fills her lungs as he returns her smile with kind eyes – oceans of a soul that feels like it is being stitched to hers by just a look.

“And it’s gonna be so different when I’m on the stage tonight,” the tone is different, the cadence higher, flowing like silk, and those who dare perceive will notice that there is heart and soul to it bared to a stranger with kind sapphirine eyes.

Tonight is going to be different, yes, and Yor Briar drinks in the catharsis like it is wine.

It is a sea of stars, and Loid finds himself drowning in her instead of the crowd.

There she is – starlight personified with the widest of smiles that can eradicate tragedies with just the curve of her lips. He feels his heart flutter – atwitter in tune with the melody, with the way her voice croons, the wane and the ripples of each note hit perfectly, tenderly, oh so, so sweetly. Like a car sputtering awake then cruising smoothly, cascading into the roads that lead to her, to her voice, to the stars in her eyes that are as red as Mars, as gentle as rubies.

Loid holds onto it, onto this moment, onto her as he weaves himself through the crowd, ignoring the waft of heady perfume and sweat, allowing himself to flow into the riverbends where there is her. He stretches out his hand, then retracts it, as though burned by her presence as she sings each note perfectly like she is singing to him.

The crowd before him fades in a blur of marbled strokes of differing hues – confetti and glitter all around her as his heartbeat slows to the sway of her.

An addiction – that is what this is. An attraction that is so akin to a vise that he cannot let go of. A stroke of lightning that has become rudimentary to his entire being, to the core of himself. Loid cannot a recall a time when this was not the case, the feeling of it, more so than the memory. He knows it too well, like a page of a book that he often visits, line per line, word per word – the moment she changed his world, threw it off its axis then back to orbit around her as though she is the sun herself.

It started so simply like a man finding water in a desert. Tough times, rough patches, nights when he does not know himself beyond the many masks he has been carrying; a tiring day at work etched deeply into his being, when his clienteles’ shadows had become him, and the research he has been doing has clung onto like second skin. It isn’t easy – carrying all the weight of their world, all their questions, and often, after the notebooks have been closed, and the times have chimed, he would often find himself in their skin, haunted by their ghosts and their worlds. Every single night like clockwork, burying the man that he was in place of this person who carried everything on his shoulders like Atlas.

It had not been premeditated – listening to her, knowing of her. It was a long, long winter night, on a Friday that felt like a Monday with snowflakes adorning the blond streaks of his hair as he sought heat in a bar that carried ghosts of men and women that once was. A bottle of scotch, and some idle conversation with Franky – lamentations of women who passed him by, and silence from Loid. Silence that is grating, that is pressed lips until they are powder thin and he cannot feel his face. A typical Friday where exhaustion settled onto his bones to break each foundation. Loid never dwelled on it too much, knowing whatever he was carrying, it cannot be loosened, but then – but then her voice broke the comfort his mind had offered, the ruminations that are running sentences without punctuation. A shattering that halted every fiber of his being, and glued the pieces back in gold and fine rubies.

He jolted awake then, like a man brought to life, the warmth comforting in his chest that reminded him of home so long ago when he was not Loid Forger and a white coat, but a child waiting for his mother to come home. An unlocking that was not dismissive of who he was, but a shoulder to cry on, and ever since then, he sought her out like one would seek nirvana.

Loid drinks her in as he stands by the foot of the stage, a breath too close to the constellations of her but never quite. He presses the heel of his hand on his sternum as though to quiet the way his heart is rummaging through the spaces to make room for her in this light.

She smiles again – that sweet smile as she sings the words he knows so well, the words he sings to himself, and the words he listens to when the world has become too overbearing, when all he does is eat and sleep and sing to his patients. Nights that he wishes would end, quietly, secretly, as he lets her carry him to a peace he never knew until her.

Loid watches Thorn Princess walk closer, and then – and then his world stills as though it suddenly forgot to orbit, and remained gravitated into her, into those eyes that are now boring into his. She smiles – differently, reserved as if she is smiling for him, and only for him, and Loid feels something shift, something tilt as though he is being perceived and being claimed all at once. His breath catches in his throat, and his heart restarts, and this time, it beats in the shape of her name.

“Oh my Gosh, Melinda,” Yor cries, glee in the tones of her voice, in the steps that she is taking as she takes her seat beside her, a halo of a glow surrounding her despite the exhaustion from last night.

Her friend watches her closely, curiously as she allows her to rest head against her shoulder, and allow the tide wash away the remnants of yesterday. There is a difference – Melinda notes, a sudden shift by the way that she is carrying herself as though Thorn Princess shed some confidence into Yor Briar in a way that does not eradicate her essence, but in a way that colors it. The difference is subtle, and yet, to those who know her, it is stark as though she is a different color entirely, than a shade deeper than it is.

Yor places a hand on her chest, feels it stutter in a quiet rhythm as she recalls the way he looked at her as though the world finally shifted correctly into its axis, and learned how to orbit without getting too much, too close. It is exhilarating like completing a marathon – the crash of the achievement rolling like a welcome rain after drought. She basks in it, in the flutter by just one look that sends her careening somewhere, elsewhere in a pillow of infatuation that feels a lot more as though she has known him all along, in a different timeline maybe, in a universe where they are already are, them.

“You are amazing,” she tells Melinda, her tone sing-song, her tone lullabies of an enthrallment that is inexplicable, that entirely shifts everything that she has kept within her in a different light. Oh, how exciting!

Melinda blinks at her, perplexed as she tries to understand where the conversation is headed, how she exactly fits in it. “I am?” She queries as she allows Yor to grab her hands, and squeeze it in a tight embrace that tells her that whatever happen on stage last night must have been borne out of an ill-spoken prophecy from a tongue that does not know the language it is speaking.

“I met a man,” Yor says, the tale warm in her tongue as she stretches her legs that are languid from yesterday’s events. “He is the man – the one that I am looking for! He looked at me as if – as if I’m the only person in the room,” she retells the look they shared, the intensity of it, how it had stolen the air in her longs without the need for words, for anything to be said – just that one look. “And I get it, there are people who would do the same, look the same, but I – I can’t explain it. It felt so different this time, like he was seeing me for who I am than what I am.”

To be perceived, that is the deepest act of love of all. To be known, to be adored, to be read as though she is the piece of literature – that is what Yor long yearned for, had prayed to the stars for when the nights have grown weary,  and the air started to become gelid despite the summer. She had been Thorn Princess for a long time – in the stage, behind music sheets, in streets, back when hunger required her to know how to strum a guitar properly, back when it had just been her and Yuri, and the only thing she can sell is her voice. She had been her for so long, and had been loved as her for so long that she started to forget who Yor is all along; what she is, who she is without this name hanging over her shoulders.

And last night – last night he looked at her as though she is just Yor Briar. He looked at her without expectation, without preamble, just an admiration that spoke so much, too much; a gaze that bore into her soul as though he desired to uncover every part of her and thank her for it. Yor has never felt so warm, so seen.

“I may just be overthinking it, but,” Yor waves it off as she rests her elbow against the table, and tilts her head to share Melinda’s curious gaze that never held any judgment despite how ridiculous she can be sometimes. “You were right with the cards.”

“I was?” Melinda asks with a raise of her brow before she tears her gaze away from Yor, and onto the stack that she has been idly playing with after her phone call with her husband. A warmth blooms in her chest, a shy type of pride that has her lips tugging in the smallest of smiles. “But, I couldn’t even tell you what they meant.”

Yor waves a hand as she folds her arms on the table. “No, you were great!” She assures, her voice lacking any kind of doubt or malice. “Go again – read something again. I want to know if I’m going to see him again tonight.” And after tonight, she thinks, unspoken, a wish that she holds dearly onto her chest.

Melinda shuffles the cards in her hands, one after another, a blur of major and minor Archanas, the sound of paper against paper reverberating through the tent. Yor idly hears Hemlock from outside argue with Shopkeeper, but she drowns it out as she focuses on each disappearing card. The art is intricate, like watching a river flow so seamlessly, and a part of her wants to dabble into it, if only to see what else is there for her. A card peers then spills into the table, followed by two that came together. Melinda halts, puts the cards over to the bowl of crystals, and then reaches to uncover the three cards.

The first one is a king on a throne with a staff – The King of Wands, it reads; the second, an upturned boat with six swords, behind it three people, with one of them rowing forwards – The Six of Swords; and lastly, a woman blindfolded, surrounded by eight swords, fenced or trapped – the Eight of Swords upright. Yor looks at the three cards curiously, and there is that inexplicable feeling at the pit of her stomach that tells her that she will see him, but – but.

 Melinda purses her lips, taps a nail against each card before lifting her gaze to meet Yor’s. She tilts her head, and Yor sees the same cloud of doubt in her face. Oh. “The King of Wands, Six of Swords reversed, and Eight of Swords – I,” she pauses, chews on the bottom of her lip, “I’m not sure? Is he – is he a public figure? Does he carry swords? I’m really not good at this, but don’t get stabbed?”

With the way Yor’s stomach plummets, she thinks, it may very well be too late for that. She may not know what it means, but something tells her that tonight will be the last night.

The evening opens in a quiet hush of starlight, the sky blanketed by intricate diamonds hanging lowly, the moonlight a slant of silver that bathes the people below with its shine. The energy is still there, riveting, glowing in anticipation, and a churn that is derived from the fact that this is the last night of her underneath the stars. Yor stands in front of it, the ache low in her belly, deep in her chest as she greets and thanks each person who decided to spend the evening with her.

“May I have the honor of taking your lives?” She asks in jest, the catchphrase well-received as the crowd erupts in laughter and praise that becomes united in a cacophony brought on by being starstruck.

There is that flutter in her chest there that always comes when she is well-received, even when sometimes, it feels lonesome to be in front of them, and beneath the blinding lights. It teases a smile from her lips as she fights the urge to look for him in the sea of people, and only allows herself to teeter by the shore lest she drowns. She moves from one side of the stage to read a banner out loud, and to ensure that everyone is still having the time of their lives.

“I love you, Thorn Princess!” Someone yells from one corner of the concert hall, their voice loud, and piercing through the many chants of the audience.

It causes Yor to laugh into her mic as she makes a show of looking for the fan, her hand hovering above her eye. “Oh, I love you, too, random citizen,” she volleys back as she stands on her toes with the widest of grins on her face, her ruby eyes glittering like starlight.

The room erupts in cheers, a scream or two echoing as she steps back and finds her center on the stage. Her eyes beg for her to look for him, and she allows herself just this once. They sweep across the many faces in the crowd, and her heart plummets when she does not see his face amongst it. Yor wants to rub at chest, but she tells herself that she is being foolish for latching onto a stranger, to a fan that only may just see her as she is – Thorn Princess.

Before she can dwell on it further, the sound of the tambourine starts, the strum of the guitars persuading her from being too melancholic. “I hate to say it, but we are nearing the end of the show, and it’s time for us to say our goodbyes. Berlint, you have been amazing as always, and I hope to see you soon – under the stars.”

She forces a smile on her face, and it comes so easily, slips in so practiced as she does one final temperature check with the crowd, and studies each nameless face. There’s movement here and there, fans pushing through to get closer – normal, completely, something she has seen done too many times, but then –

But then, it’s his blue eyes and enigmatic smile, and suddenly, suddenly Yor thinks tonight is going to be alright.

“I was sick and tired of everything, when I called you last night,” she begins with more heart to it as she keeps her gaze level with his. The stranger tips his head in a nod, and Yor feels her heart skip in time with the beat as she moves away to find her center on the stage.

A faint pink dusts across her cheeks, and she decides to be brave by waving a hand back to him. She sees him fluster, a pretty crimson that reaches to the tops of his ears as a grin eases and takes over his entire features. Oh, he looks so beautiful, she muses – just hers.

“So imagine I was glad to hear you coming,” Yor sings, meaning it, truly, as she breaks her gaze from him for a moment to glance over at the audience so they do not feel left out. Through her periphery, she sees him deflate, and she decides, bravely, to meet his gaze once again and break the song in a heartfelt comment that could be to anyone, “I am truly.” She smiles at him, and watches him fluster further, but he smiles – oh, how wide he smiles at her, for her. “Suddenly, I feel alright.”

Because she does, she really does, and whatever the cards had told her earlier, she will fight against it, whatever it meant. Does it mean she has to row to get to him? She doesn’t know, but if she needs to, she will. She will ask Shopkeeper to track this fan down, to get to know him, to at least see the smile up close, even when it seems that it will be hard because there is something there, in the look that he is giving her, that she wants to find out.

It feels as though, after thirty-two years, finally, Loid Forger has learned the skill of holding his breath long enough until his lungs learn how to breathe in somebody else as though they are oxygen.

The skill was not learned through books, through research underneath differing scholarly names, through practice, through experience, but through gazes that are held in the sea of faceless strangers. Just a gaze – just the rubies of her eyes on his, the warmth of the undertones of her crimson irises meeting the oceans of his that are only filled with the constellations of her. It was enough – it is enough to get him to understand that moving forward, from this day onward, the only thing that he will allow himself to breathe is her.

The trees do not compare in their craft – oxygen is something he can live without, he thinks. Her parents, her maker – they are gods themselves for sculpting something so divine, and allowing her to exist in the realm of mortals. A gift that is what she is, and Loid does not know if any man or woman deserves to receive her, and yet he does, and he drinks her in like she is the last drop of water in the middle of Sahara.

A shiver runs down his spine as though she is tracing every part of his soul, exploring every inch of it to replace its topography with her and hers alone.

Loid Forger has never thought himself to be a dead man, far from it, even when the nights are dreary, even when mornings are spent on bitter coffee and an empty stomach, afternoons for patients who drawled about their existential crisis or their lack thereof. Yet, now, in the face of this goddess divine, he finds himself dead, and alive simultaneously – holding his heart in his hands, listening to it to try to learn the shape of her name with its beating, while bleeding out into the soil like he is watering the flowers for her, and for his tombstone. She is death and life herself, and Loid finds himself chasing the paradox as though her presence alone is not enough.

Her smile is sweet towards him, and somehow, selfishly, he thinks, the smile is his. Not without basis, not under an insanity driven by her spell, but something about the way eyes soften when its with his, and the way the curves are more tender when it is sent his way. Perhaps, he has entered delirium, a state of unbecoming borne out of nights that are too long and bled into mornings, but he tells himself – convinces himself that this is not an oasis in the middle of a desert, but something concrete he can hold.

Even when he can’t, even when his hands are too busy shaking to even grasp at his phone to take a picture; not that he wants to, even. He feels as though the interaction is too sacred to do anything of such, afraid to mar it, to scare her as though he is bird watching and left with his binoculars and his brain to take a mental image. No, this is his – this moment, her underneath the starlight, underneath the intensity of his gaze. This is his – not to tell, not to brag, but something to keep in the confines of his heart. And apart from that, who can he tell that will understand? This is his. A memory he can replay over and over, when time is unkind, and the tickets are sold out – when nights are longer again, and her voice no longer suffices.

Something to hold onto when he cannot hold onto her – he cannot. Not when there is a wedge in between them – heaven and earth, a man pining for a celebrity who might not even know his name or that, he exists. Just a point she fixates on during her pirouettes into the night, and nothing more, nothing of significance after the final curtain call.

And yet – and yet, he dreams, he wishes; for her to know, for her to seek him, even when he can’t, even when he is limited. He longs for her in ways that are different, in ways he can learn her soul as much as she would learn his. Not obsession, no; not projection, but a stir at the pit of his stomach that is akin to familiarity, as though he has known of her before in a past life where home is warm, home is full, and home is her smile after a long day. He does not know what it is, has even tried to reach the deepest cavities of his heart to understand the feeling the first time their eyes met the first night, and yet, like a newly introduced equation, he cannot fathom how x turned up to be this answer that strays away from logic and all formulas present.

Maybe, in a sense, it is some sort of limerence, a chase for something cathartic after being given the chance to drink in the chalice of ambition. Interactions magnified to convey some sort of belonging that is non-existent, a pull to get by the day to day that is slowly driving him insane. Because there is no way, no probability, that a woman of her caliber, a woman who has the world at the tips of his fingers will know of him, and choose him amongst the galaxies presented to her.

It is madness – this want, this pull, and yet – and yet, and yet, he allows himself to be drawn to her, like a magnet driven mad by distance, careening over to its opposite as though deprived of interaction. He shares her gaze, and hopes, prays, that this invisible line between the both of them is eradicated, erased, pitched somewhere so he can cross, so he can row towards her like a sailor desperate to find land.

Loid thinks he has gone completely mad, but if it is madness to be completely, devastatingly infatuated by her, then he will happily don the straightjackets and paint the cushioned walls in the shade of the red in her eyes.

The next two days are terrible, stretched too long as though the forty-eight hours are asking to become a fortnight, and Yor finds herself at every edge possible, jagged at the restlessness his gaze has left her.

She finds herself staring at the ceiling most times, imagines how it will look like painted in the blue of his eyes just so she can relive the exhilarating moment when she felt saved from herself, from the blinding lights, and twenty thousand faceless friends. Sleep had become difficult, a tide that does not meet the shore, and only teases it with sea foam and a promise, leaving her to her own devices, and the idea to go against Shopkeeper’s advice, and swim to him directionless. Tossing and turning, her hands moving south to find anything to relieve her of the knots that she had been reduced to, only to be left with an ache to be perceived, to be seen by the same cerulean gaze that almost seems admiral underneath the moonlight.

“I have to find him,” she says on the second day after the concert, when she is supposed to be enjoying the sights of Berlint, and meeting her brother halfway for tea. There are a multitude of tasks she had wanted to do – dress shopping or visiting the tailor for an acceptable outfit for an impromptu high school reunion her brother had begged her to go – and yet, Yor finds herself, helplessly, rooted into the plush cushions of her management’s sofa with Melinda watching her curiously as she thought of her own stage names and Hemlock pretending they are a nuisance.

Hemlock tuts, the click of his tongue underneath his teeth echoing, accompanied by footfalls that are burning holes in Shopkeeper’s carpet. “I liked you before when you were lonely – now you are pathetic. Don’t you know that music feels more endearing when it comes from sorrow?” He asks rhetorically, and there is venom etched in all the words that had been spewed, but not deep enough to inflict wounds.

Yor chooses to ignore him as she finally lifts herself off the sofa, her legs swinging to the side as she stands with renewed vigor. Melinda follows her, and she takes out the stacks of cards from her bag, enthusiastically, giddy at the notion that she will be indulged once more to dabble into mysticism. Though she still has a lot of ways to learn, reading for Yor has always allowed her to practice her craft albeit she still could not identify the art of understanding the diagram and relating it to its actual meaning. There will come a time, she hopes, at least before Selena makes a debut. Shopkeeper has allowed her as an opening act of some sorts with the ask to keep her identity hidden lest she attracts political issues as the wife of the current prime minister. Donovan never asked her to hide herself, granted, she has never heard anything from him aside from that ten-yard stare, but still, she would rather keep this side of her hers, and not tarnished by his fiends and cronies.

Melinda spreads the cards on the table, a different approach this time, one she has heard to be more interactive than shuffling the cards like a dealer at a casino. Yor takes her seat across from her, lips pursed, expression clouded by her internal debate and longing. Curiosity clouds the sanguine tinge of her eyes, irises taking in each iridescent design of the cards down turned, debating, calculating, as though this is a mathematical equation that she needs to answer correctly. From behind her, Hemlock goes on his tirade how loneliness improved his skills at violin, one she purposely drowns out with the song she has in mind for the man that had called her to sea like a siren. Can men be sirens? Yor shakes her head – focus.

“Whenever you’re ready,” Melinda says, or dare she say, Selena as she watches Yor, her tawny eyes golden with anticipation, barely able to contain herself with the glee she feels through to her bones. Briefly, she wonders, should she call this little act as the Lady Patriots Society? That can be too much, too alluding to who she is, so then – then, back to the drawing board it seems.

Yor lifts her hand, her pointer finger poised to choose as they hover above all seventy-eight cards, her lower lip worried, absentmindedly, by her teeth, debating which is the right one, which one sings to her heart the most. Her pointer finger hovers, traces the line that they are spread out on, stops and then moves forward again when her heart lurches to say no. It takes her a few moments, several visits to and fro, and another Shakespearean monologue from Hemlock about how his life is at the pinnacle of music, condemning Beethoven (she briefly wants to correct him he is not violinist, and yet, she doesn’t; she has more pressing matters to attend to) before she lands on three cards, five cards away from one another. Each time she points at one, Melinda takes it in her hands, and once everything is collected, she sweeps the rest back into the stack and places the three upturned, and facing her.

The first card is a pauper with a sword, held so tightly in his hands, positioned upright and staring ahead – the Page of Swords; the second, reversed, men in the midst of a squabble, wooden staffs in their hands – the Five of Wands; and lastly, a disembodied hand bursting from a cloud, holding a wooden staff filled with viridian leaves – the Ace of Wands. Melinda hums contently, amber eyes taking in each card greeting her, and she lets of a pleased sigh that Yor wants to divulge further.

Yor tilts her head as she ignores how the clock is telling her it is already twelve in the afternoon, and she would be needing to go to the tailor to get her favorite dress fixed. There is no time to go dress shopping, not when she is finnicky about the dress that she wants to wear in front of Camilla, and other previous classmates who still view her as… odd. An exhale leaves her lips, one that is bones deep that she shelves away as she smiles at Melinda, anticipation clinging onto the seams of her dress like a petulant child. The cards look good, and so does Melinda’s expression, and so she hopes, oh how she hopes, that she sees him again, somehow, some way – he has to live in Berlint, right?

“We have the Page of Swords, the Five of Wands reversed, and then – oh, how amazing – the Ace of Wands!” Melinda clasps her hands, delighted, giddy at the premise of potential good news as she straightens her spine and meets Yor’s gaze with a warmth that never misses to be genuine.

“Oh,” Yor mimics the inflection in Melinda’s tone, infected by this burst of joy as she feels warmth blossom at the pit of her stomach like a rose petal finally burgeoning after days under the harsh winds of winter. “So, I will see him?” She asks as she looks at each card, reveling that warmth, that tingle she feels through to her finger tips. She can tell that there will be a shift – something happening, something rather, big.

Melinda nods as she traces each illustration with a manicured finger, before her expression drops by just a fraction, brows being drawn in the middle. “Though, I guess, uh, be careful with men wielding swords and wooden weapons? Also, a hand might touch you – uh, I don’t know. I swear I’m trying to get better at doing this,” she says, lifting her gaze to look apologetically at Yor, bottom lip worried by her teeth.

Yor waves her away, a subtle shake of the head before she is reaching her Melinda’s hand to grasp in hers. “You are doing just fine – thank you. I think I can run my errands now,” she says, wistfully, as she clings onto the warmth in her bones.

She will see him, she knows, and there will be more than just a shared gaze.

Loid is, for the lack of a better term, miserable.

He has called in sick on the second day, when space was more interesting than his client’s words, when it seems like a draft has suddenly come through a shut window. He couldn’t understand it – the decline, this performance that is lackluster as though his health is tethered to her.

A co-dependency, he thinks, one he knows that he will need to shake off in some way or shape, faster, before everything that he has built derails. He has tried to combat it, this post-concert depression, through research filtered by her song, but every time he puts on the recorder, he finds himself drowning, and waiting for her as a buoy even though he can swim. Nurse Fiona had made a brute comment about it – his unbecoming, this softness that never seems to surface through the cracks, a shadow in the grey of her eyes as it rolls heavenward as an instrument to her disdain.

“I thought the two days off would have done you good,” Sylvia remarks one day when the offices beside him can no longer take the phantom of the man that he has become, and the repetitive song filtering through his walls. “Was she disappointing?” She asks, because it does not make sense – this disposition, this desperate grasp at the idea of her as though she is straws.

Loid shakes his head then, offended, so much so that it reflects in the blue of his eyes, clouded as though the insult was aimed directly at him than the woman who stitched her soul into his. “No, of course not. Why would you think that?” He says, his words edged as he runs a hand through his tousled hair for the umpteenth time of the day. A mess, that is what he is, a man skittering off sanity as though Thorn Princess held it in between her fingers. It should be crazy, and it is, but he feels as though she took a part of him when she left.

Sylvia rolls her shoulders in a shrug, her expression remaining unimpressed as she exhales. “You look like you haven’t slept – “

“ – I haven’t.”

“And,” she lifts a finger, trying to control the situation, “I’m trying to understand why. For the sake of my own sanity since I can’t keep accepting complaints from Nurse Fiona, and the others about your choice of music.”

“Would you fight me if I asked for a day off?” He says, skittering around the question, scampering more so, as he flattens his palms against his paperwork. “I just don’t think I have had enough rest lately.”

Sylvia looks like she is about to make a comment, but she bites her tongue, swallows it. The clock before them ticks closer to five, and she promised Aaron she would be home soon – never mind that he is a dog, but still. “Fine. If this resolves the noise complaint – fine. Take the day off, but I’m expecting you in shape once you come back, Doctor Forger. No ifs or buts.” She says, and that’s how he finds himself, on the second day, at the tailor, asking for the seamstress to fix a coat he has long forgotten has been torn, miserable through to his bones, and her gaze etched onto his skin like a tattoo.

She shepherds herself into the tailor smoothly, swiftly with a finesse that goes along with silence. Yor takes her place behind the counter, hope dangling at the edges, fingers clinging on the wrapped fabric of a torn dress, feet restless, wanting to be somewhere, anywhere where he is. It is ridiculous – this wanting; Berlint is a populace area, and she knows, dreadfully, that coming across the same man is slim to none, and yet… and yet, she clings onto the reading like she is rewriting the meaning herself based on instinct.

“Oh,” the seamstress greets her, a grin etched on her features as she abandons the lady she had been taking measurements for, and erases the distance between them. “Yor Briar, it’s been so long since I have last seen you – how are you?” She asks, her voice lilt with affection that goes beyond Thorn Princess, but with familiarity that is not tarnished by fame no matter how blinding the lights can be.

Yor smiles, and it is easy, just as her heart flutters. To be perceived beyond the façade, beyond the woman that she is, it is what she has long longed for, even when she longs for something more romantic, more companiable than recognition and nostalgia from a woman who watched her and Yuri grow up.

“I have been good, Mrs. Authen,” Yor says as she lifts the carefully wrapped dress for the seamstress’ purview. The elder woman approaches her, her steps nimble and sure as she adjusts her glasses, a tired smile encompassing her face that Yor sees is tinged with pride. “I just wanted to get my dress stitched back before the reunion with some classmates back in Eden College.”

Mrs. Authen takes the package from her hands, her touch careful, and reverent, something Yor always admires about her. “Ah,” she replies with recognition as she takes apart the packaging, and inspects the tear herself. There is a tut there, but it is short-lived. “Can be done in fifteen minutes. How long will you be in Berlint for?”

Yor smiles, wistful, as she flattens her palms against the counter. She feels a stranger’s stare like spotlight suddenly casted her way, amber luminescence bleeding into her to illuminate each part of her she does not want to be perceived – at least, not by this man. She ignores it, at least until Mrs. Authen decides to take the dress at the back. “A week, then I’m off to Hugaria – the last leg of the tour.” She bites her lip before pursing it to the side, and allows herself to look deflated in the eye of a woman who helped her raise Yuri when she was only seven.

“Hm,” Mrs. Authen hums as she runs a finger on the tear, then lifts her gaze to look back at Yor. There is that look of price, and concern behind her eyes, one she has never tired of seeing no matter how long the years have passed. She wishes she visited sooner. “Have you been eating well?”

“I have,” Yor says, a small smile on her face as she shifts on her feet, and focuses on one of the few people who has shown her and brother kindness when it was a luxury. “How is Mr. Authen?”

Mrs. Authen waves a hand. “Forgetful as always, but he still finds his way home, so don’t worry. He wanted to come to one of your concerts, but, I worry about Siggy. He might get overwhelmed, and I’m too rickety to chase after him like I used to, but he is good – won’t you come by and pay him a visit?”

“Of course, I would want nothing more,” Yor replies as she watches the elderly woman disappear at the back of the shop. It is just then that she allows herself to fully the face the stranger, her eyes trained on her hands as the hair on her arms raise in mild annoyance. “Excuse me, sir, but you have been staring at me for quite some time now.”

Loid pales, the crimson in his cheeks exsanguinated as he shares the gaze of the woman that has taken his soul. “I – “ He starts, the words flimsy and elusive as she lifts her sharpened gaze to meet his. Whatever sharpness that is within it dissolves, and he finds his heart suddenly out of his chest. “I’m sorry, I just – I think you’re beautiful and I – “

“ – You’re the man from the concert,” she interjects, her heart in her throat as she advances, her steps sure as the butterflies invade every inch of her internal organs, replacing them with nectarine and petals. “You think I’m beautiful?”

“Yes, of course. I – “

“ – And not because I’m Thorn Princess?” She asks with a tilt of her head, her hands clasped together and resting underneath her chin, sanguine eyes seeking an answer that she has been thirsting for. A confirmation that she has been seeking, that he has perceived her quite so, illogically so, in ways that she cannot fathom.

Loid flusters, the dust on his cheeks pink as he finds himself inching close to her. He shakes his head, and then once again as though to wake himself up from this trance. “No, of course not, I – I can’t explain it – “

“ – Neither can I,” she volleys back, her body so close to his, her gaze so, so tender and expectant, and holding every bit of hope she has been clinging onto since that night she has seen him, in the midst of the crowd, the blue in his eyes the ocean she wants to get lost into.

Loid thinks she looks innocent, so, so amorous, eloquently, fundamentally, and suddenly his – it’s insane. She is driving him insane. “I’m sorry for staring – “

“ – Don’t apologize.”

His laughter breaks the heartfelt reunion, a shaky trill akin to a giggle as he flusters further crimson. Yor feels it stitch its treble clefs in the skin of her heart. “I can’t believe this – “

“ – Neither can I.”

“Are we just going to finish each other’s sentences?” He laughs again, and this time, Yor joins him, shares this catharsis, this glass of whatever this is that is them, and just them, even when it feels insane, sounds insane, looks insane – like holding the stars in your hands and unsure what to do with it.

“Well,” Yor flushes crimson as she ghosts the bottom of her lip with her tongue before snagging it with her teeth. She debates on it, on the thought, on the imposition – it is ridiculous, but then… but then, it might not be, not really, not when she is trying to grasp at him and he, her like they are holding onto dust in the middle of a hurricane. “There is one favor I wanted to ask of you.”

The Lovers, The World, and the Ten of Cups – those were the cards that Melinda had imparted her with before she left in a hurry, in a blizzard of renewed hope, and tight black dress, a song stitched in every step, every cadence. Yor can feel her heart thrum carefully, rhythmically as she stands by the waiting shed, waiting for him, for the man with blue eyes that saw through to her, for Loid, for – her breath catches – for her Loid.

Perhaps – perhaps, it is preemptive, to call him that, to assign labels, but she lets it, allows it, powered through by the honey in his lips when he kissed her so, and allowed her to feel what stardust feels like in her tongue, in her mouth. Yor reaches for where her heart lies, where her sternum barely keeps it, and counts each beat of her heart that sounds a lot like his. The evening wind whips, ebbing and flowing in a coldness, as the minutes tick past the time they agreed to meet, and a dread settles, circles at the pit of her stomach akin to a wound doused in hefty amounts of salt.

She glances at her phone in her hands, notes the time and the absence of any calls nor messages, and sighs, the exhale coming through the tight seam of her lips. Her heart stutters, achingly so, and she notices that his name no longer resounds in it. A tear wants to make way, break through, and she shakes her head, unwilling to entertain it.

So –

“So this is what it feels like to be played,” she murmurs to herself, to her heart, asking it to quiet its lament as she decides, harrowingly, to leave the bus station, fifteen minutes past the time they agreed to meet.

Her heels click against asphalt, the life stitched to each click forgotten as she makes her descent towards Camilla’s house where the reunion will be held. She would just have to bear it, to face it, even when they regard her fame as an anomaly, even when they stitch her value to their ideation of success. The traverse is short, quick, even when it felt like walking on molasses, and Yor braves a face with a battered tin for a shield as she thrusts herself into the companionship of the people she least wanted to see – all to quiet her brother’s worry, all for appearances she does not want to make.

“You’re late, Yor,” Camilla remarks as she opens the door, and interjects the conversation with her appearance. “Where’s your date? Don’t tell me you got dumped before the party?” She asks, her voice ladened in venom as she tuts and shakes her head. The crowd of her Eden Academy classmates break into a murmur, and Yor shelves herself into the farthest corner of the room, nearest to the door to shield herself from it.

Why did she come here?

“No, he’s just – he’s just busy,” Yor excuses, even when she does not understand the reason for the absence, the sudden turn. At the pit of her stomach, at the back of her mind, she does, but she does not want to dwell on it, acknowledge it. Fans take advantage, she knows this, and a kiss is a bragging right, a trophy, and yet, even so, at the probability, she dismisses it – naïve, so kindhearted, so dull.

Loid would never do that to her. Her Loid would never do that to her, but then again, is he hers to begin with? They shared a gaze, a kiss, and not so much deeper than that. Yor sighs, and the exhale does not go unmissed as Camilla delights Yor’s misfortune with the trill of her laughter, and a whisper to both Sharon and Millie.

If she goes home, and files a lawsuit, she is sure, Yuri might understand, might take the explanation. These people have always used knowing her as a privilege, and in turn, had bathed her with judgment and sneers – he will understand if she does this, he will not call her a snob.

Yor flattens the palms of her hands against her dress, her sigh shaky as she presses her eyes closed. He will understand, will he? He always does. Why is she here? Why is she letting them judge her so? Yor shakes her head again, and this time to dispel her thoughts as she counts to a hundred, tries to find solace where solace is not suing them down to their rights. The effort is missed, the clock ticking loudly, their voice resounding in this echo chamber of judgment and spite, and Yor – Yor finds her stomach churning, her resolve breaking, and before she can talk herself out of it, she is standing to her feet.

She cannot take this anymore. She is Thorn Princess – why is she taking their abuse quite so like it is the last pitcher of water to quench her thirst?

“Excuse me,” Yor says, her voice soft, but it breaks the laughter, the conversation, the mockery. All eyes dart towards her, and they are full of judgment, full of ridicule as though they hold more value than her, and she tries, oh how she tries to quiet the quiver that wants to break through, the –

The door opens in a slam, like a thunder clap that breaks through cerulean skies, unexpected, and reverberating. “I’m sorry for being late,” he says, his voice silk in a bed of nails. “My name is Loid Forger, and I am Yor’s husband.”

Crimson eyes widen, and so does the rest of the audience before them as though the theater has called on a twist that is not on the script. Yor turns to him, alarmed, and she lifts a hand to shield the secret she is about to whisper, “I – I needed a date, not a husband.”

Loid turns to her, apologetic, alarmed as though he is an ambulance whining in an otherwise quiet road, but the damage is done, and all he can do is reach for her hand and squeeze it. He minutely forgets the blood trickling from his hairline to his face until Yor is pressing a handkerchief on his face to quiet the stream. An apology tastes itself at the tip of his tongue, but before he can say anything, something to remedy the mistake, the blonde woman is already approaching them with disbelief painted perfectly on the undertones of her makeup. Her gaze is sharp, envious, standing out from the exsanguinated expressions the rest carry.

“You’re married?” Camilla asks and huffs out a sigh as she narrows the space between them with purposeful strides. “You didn’t tell us? And it wasn’t in the news?”

Loid interjects as he catches on the exhale she makes, the apology fresh on her lips, “I’m not in the limelight after all, and we wanted to keep it under wraps to protect our privacy.”

Camilla scoffs as she crosses her arms against her chest, looking him up and down as though she holds a magnifying glass to inspect the cracks in the lie. “Mr. Ranger – “

“ – It’s Forger,”

Camilla waves him off with a hand and a roll of her eyes, her lips covered with a sly smirk. “Did you know that before Yor was Thorn Princess, she took unseemly jobs just to get management to consider her?”

The rubies in Yor’s eyes shine, her mouth forming in a silent exclaim as she looks over at him. “It’s not – “

“ – Yor had to take care of her brother when her parents died at the war, and I think there is something so admirable about sacrificing yourself for the people that you love.” He says, the truth eloquent in his tongue, well-versed in the language of her even before knowing her past, even before he was given the privilege to know. He takes Yor’s hand in his, turning to her with the sincerest of apologies marring his face, “let’s go home.”

Yor nods, thankfully, quietly, and it seems, even before the stage that is this reunion meant to ostracize her, everything feels alright – different.

Later, when the only audience is the evening, and the moon and the stars, Yor turns to him with an unreadable expression, her hand nestled in his.

“Loid?” She calls to him, like a siren would, and he turns to her like a sailor, the robes of his act dropped as he smoothens a thumb over her knuckles.

He tilts his head, slows his pace as they come to a halt underneath lamplights and trees that shiver underneath the spring air. There is a smile teasing his lips, a question in his eyes. “Yes?”

“Thank you,” she murmurs, her voice quiet, her heart atwitter as she evades his gaze and looks onto the asphalt of the streets that seem endless underneath the shimmer of stars and moonlight. There are fewer people now, the evening already teasing something deeper, something that requires rest.

He shakes his head, the blond catching the stream of silver, seemingly golden as he tries to search for the rubies in her eyes. “I’m sorry,” he says instead, voice quiet, and it’s then that she allows him to drink her in, to perceive her as he did two nights ago.

“It’s okay,” she volleys back, almost says that he does not owe her anything. It’s at the tip of her tongue, etched in the way her lips quiver, and he takes notice.

He shakes his head once again, and draws her closer to him, still in disbelief that the woman he has considered his salvation is right in front of him, within his reach without the threat of fading away like stardust in the middle of daybreak. “It’s not. I should have been earlier. I didn’t want you to think that I was just a deranged fan who stole a kiss from you, and then went about their way, even though, I am,” he pauses to exhale, to close his eyes for a moment as the admission touches a corner of his heart that has remained dormant until now, “inexplicably, thoroughly insane about you.”

A smile touches her lips, and Loid finds himself seemingly gazing at the moon itself. “I – “ she begins, then halts, suddenly shy. “I did think you just stole a kiss at first, but – but,” she sputters, flushing a deeper shade of crimson, as sanguine as her eyes underneath starlight. “Now you’re here and I – just thank you.”

Loid wants to kiss her, wants to taste her, but he refrains, lets her stitch every part of herself into him by the way she is sharing his gaze. “I’m sorry. I had a drunk patient stop me on my way here, and he – well, let’s say he threw a potted plant on my head and called me a quack for not resolving his issue with emotional attachments.”

Yor winces, but he shakes his head as he squeezes her hand. “Are you okay?”

“I am now,” he says, and it sounds like strings of cheese, like confection, but Yor does not take it that way, the sincerity fierce through to her as they walk through the quiet atmosphere of the park.

A silence passes, thick, yet not overbearing, their heels and footfalls serving to blanket it as comfort draws them closer to one another like it is sewing them into their respective lives. The flutter is loud in Yor’s heart, but it settles quietly like butterfly wings that finally understood the motion and the speed they want to commit to. A warmth that blossoms, roses in spring, that takes root, but does not drain, but grows inexplicably. A love, but not quite, but a knowing, a familiarity that is more than just their bones recognizing one another. A red string of fate, as Melinda calls it, a certain completion, an understanding in the fluency of one another.

It is crazy – this whole thing, this shortened span enlivened by gazes, but home is in the hearth of his heart beating, in the gentleness of his touch. Home is in her voice even when she is not Thorn Princess, and simply just Yor Briar. Home is her smile, her laughter, and her knowing gaze, and it is crazy, absolutely insane, to find shelter and immediately find warmth in, but he does, oh he does.

The shift is a puzzle piece, a jigsaw finding its way back home so seamlessly as though it had not been lost at all. He is unsure if there are studies, research about it, but it does not matter, none of it does, for if there is not, he will be the first of the academe to write it – the prose of knowing your other half by just one look, the solemnity that clicks so suddenly once everything shifts into color, into a perspective that should be nonsensical. A buoy – no, a tide that he is willing to be carried over to, to crash onto her, and into her arms. A sense of belonging, an inexplicable stitch of a soul.

A familiar face in an agonizing thick crowd that claims to know, claims to take – an ocean where no trenches are unexplored, unfamiliar even if it is the first time to come to know of it. A talisman of some sort that quiets everything into comfort instead of a hush of whispers, or silence that grows too weary. A blanket over cold shoulders that is not broken down by time nor burdened by loose threads, but one that resolves, and provides life without any expectation, without any pause, as though it knew by just being within proximity that this is right, that the shoulders it warms is theirs, and they are theirs.

An insanity, that does not feel quite so. A becoming that the both of them have no words to explain, just that there is them, and there is being with one another. As though something clicked, something lost is found, a recognition after a life of soaring and wading through faceless crowds – them, and them, and them.

Yor halts, and so does Loid as realization clicks, as recognition of what she wants to do settles. It is crazy – the idea, the want, but the desire is bigger, deeper, like a rock that is plummeting in the deepest parts of the well, a thought she cannot rationalize against. And, well, she decides, if it is insane, then she will live with it, and she will allow herself to be therapized by the man before her who seems more art than science.

Yor purses her lips as she gazes up at him as though she is stargazing, and bathing in the starlight. “Let’s get married,” she says with vigor, the tremor in her voice disappearing as though they never existed at all.

Loid trips, even when he is unmoving, and he blames it on the rock that is non-existent than the way his knees had suddenly forgotten their foundation. He looks at her, mouth agape, as though she has given him the moon when he is asking for just the shimmer of light. “I – “ He starts, sputtering like a car that has forgotten how to function, the engine taking a while to warm enough to remember what it is for. “Yes – yes, of course.”

It's insane, really – how easily both of them has decided to weave themselves in each other’s lives, but it is easy, as though it is something pre-destined, as though Loid has suddenly abandoned science and dabbled in mysticism and spirituality. He should have talked her out of it, but his mouth is cotton, and it just feels right. This – this whole thing, as though it changed the meaning of the word right in his vernacular and added whatever this is as its definition.

Loid eases himself out of her hold to pluck a flower out of the bushes, and she watches quietly, curiously with her heart in her throat. He removes the flower from its stem, and reaches to tuck her midnight hair behind her ear before securing it with a pink carnation. She says nothing, silence her words, as she allows herself to wait for whatever this is to unfold. He takes her hand from her side, and shortens the stem of the carnation before weaving it around her ring finger in a vow that may be made prematurely, but feels just right.

“For better or for worse,” he recites, and so does she with the stars and the moon their witnesses. “In sickness and in health, and till death do us part.” How many deaths, how many changes – they think, they will still fall into step with each other, they will still find one another in crowds that make it difficult.

Yor’s breath hitches, and he captures it with his own – a vow of a kiss, a quiet promise that is made too fast, but feels just so, just right, just in time. “Let’s go to City Hall tomorrow.”

“Already?” She echoes against the skin of his lips, and her breath tastes like butterscotch and a breath of fresh air.

He nods, intoxicated with her, with the insanity of this. “Yes, before we both change our minds.”

They won’t – they both know. In this dance, as it seems, both of them would hold on as the world tilts back into its axis, and the lights are less blinding.

The crowd is an orchestra of people, their chants a string quartet, and Yor the composer. She stands before them, her mic in hand, a smile in her lips as she tastes the remnants of the sun and the tease of the moon. The sky is splayed with lilac and tangerines, the cerulean being chased away as stars littered like diamonds twinkle from the clouds they have hid themselves in.

Her eyes search the faceless and nameless friends she has – twenty thousand with her name in their lips as she opens the last leg of her tour after the hiatus. They are loud, intoxicating, and they demand, but there is no exhaustion in her bones as she finds her center and brings her mic to her lips.

“Thank you for having me, Hugaria,” she opens, even though her pre-recorded video has already done the preamble, and she meets each eye however she can with the sweep of her gaze. There is that ache again at the pit of her stomach, that longing for home that she lets settle. “We are going to have a wonderful evening together, and I just want to say,” another glance, another search, and then – and then, there is his cerulean gaze amongst the crowd. “The sight of you proves to me I’m still alive!”

The guitars resound, and so does the tambourine in time with the way her heart beats his name, and his, hers – the sight of him does prove, that she is still alive, and she can’t wait to be taken into his arms.