It is a Friday night, past sundown and past the pricking of the first stars through the tapestry of the night and late enough to be after dinner but still well before bed when Silas's phone buzzes. A familiar name has sent him a text message, which is an oddity between them -- both that her phone has allowed such things and also, perhaps, odd to Silas that she even knows how -- but verifiably from Arianna's number:
I have (wine emoji) and I am thinking about you.
It's the mix of emoji's and correct grammar and words spelled out in their entirety that really confirms it. He cannot tell how long it has taken her to type this out with her thumbs, perhaps requiring her to set down her wine glass. Oh, gods, if she has set down her wine glass then...
Buzz.
Today I was glorious and luminous and out-shining and crafty. I made things. (Star emoji). Talismen.
Buzz. Buzz.
Talismans? Men?
Mans? Männer?
Fuck.
Buzz.
The many form of Talisman. Whatever the fuck that is. I made them. Of Zachriel. And I was glorious.
Buzz.
And now I have (wine emoji), but no fire. (sad face emoji). Because no wood.
Buzz.
Not like that. I an anatomically disinclined to have that kind of wood. I mean the for-burning kind. I have no for-burning wood, therefore no (fire emoji). Some day I will make woodless fire, but today I made Talismänner and they are good. But fire would be better.
Buzz.
You would be better.
Buzz.
Do you want to come over?
Buzz.
I have (wine emoji). If you bring (wood emoji), we could have (fire emoji). I am pretty sure the front door is unlocked.
And then, at last, silence. At least until she thinks of another torrent of words and pictograms to send him. Or passes out on her living room floor. If does drop by he will find the front door unlocked, and the chandelier above the foyer lit, and Arianna sitting on the floor of the great room with a bottle of wine beside her.
If he knocks, she will answer the door wearing a pair of soft grey pants and a boat neck tee. Her hands and arms and feet are stained with a frecklings and stripes of ink. There is an undeniable weariness about her, wreathed in the taste and temptation of her resonance. And she wears the most pleased smile, self-satisfied and also gentled, her will eroded down to mundane levels which leaves her incapable of hiding her affection or delight from her eyes as they land on his.
[Silas]
He is in the tail end of a work meeting when the torrent of texts begins and so the answer isn't immediate; it doesn't come until after the last, when it is simple and to the point.
Ding.
On my way.
The message is succinct and it takes time to stop for wood and for crudites, the latter just to make sure that Arianna has something to eat with her drinking; so some time has passed between his answer and his knocking on the door before letting himself in (because rarely does a Hunter wait for invitation, regardless how old the rules he follows). He's clad professionally in slacks, a button down shirt, and a tie, a proverbial wolf in sheep's clothing, with his sleeves rolled up, a bundle of firewood in one arm, and a smallish platter of snack of the meat, cheese, and bread variety in the other.
"Hullo, Stella. Have you eaten?" The platter finds a home on a table, and then he crouches before her fireplace with this bundle of wood he's brought (and, for the record, those dress slacks fit him quite nicely indeed) to lay in the fire. There's quiet for a moment as he builds the fire she requested, then stands to face her - amused, a bit. "Someone gave you a phone. And taught you to text."
He is, of course, pleased that it's he she called. And, as always, he enjoys his place in her shine.
"And you are, indeed, quite radiant."
[Arianna]
At some point it will occur to her, or to them both, that the reformed rake is the responsible party between them two of them. Not that Arianna makes claims on reliability or adult behavior, just that Silas was so much further from it in their youth. Now it is he who worries after whether she has something to eat with her drinking, and likely steers her gently toward grounding things, as he would have been taught in time with his Primal Aunt, and it is Arianna who enjoys the floaty untethered high of work well done and dwindling willpower. It is rare that she can claim such exaltation; she revels in it.
Through the sliding door to the patio, he can see the aftermath of her physical working. There are drop cloths spread across the flooring, rumpled in places by the passage of feet, stained and dirty in others. The table is still decked with the accouterments of her working, though the brushes and nibs and styluses and inks have been quietly cleaned and put inside. There is a sheaf of paper on the low coffee table, it's edges mostly but not perfectly squared and then tucked between the covers of a leather-bound portfolio. It rests beside the plates of meats and cheeses and other adornments. It is not tied shut and the margins which extend beyond the edge of dark leather offer up the shapes of words and sigils from many lands, and also, of course, of the purest and most perfect tongue: Enochian.
She is not so tired nor so rude that she does not rise at the sound of knocking at her door. But she is slower to rise than he is to enter, and so she moves behind him like a shadow. To close and bar the door, now that he is here. To stand beside him as he builds the fire. And what is standing near him good for if she is not also touching him, so there is a faint caress of fingertips at the ends of his hair, and then the touch of her hands on his shoulders, which knead a little at the muscles there in echoes of ways he has done for her. But as they are echoes, it is more affectionate than therapeutic, and he can feel the uneven strength to her hands, reversed from his usual expectations, her dominant gentled by the weariness of wield her pen and brush for so many hours on end.
"Nick and I got dinner after," she tells him, as her hands give up the idle work of working at his shoulders and slide, flat palms against his chest, around to hug him in an awkward embrace. As she leans her cheek against the top of his head, and keeps him entirely from his work of stoking the fire -- but perhaps it is a happy hindrance -- the other resonance standing on her patio is made clear by this Naming. It is more like moonlight, this puddle of after-magic on her out-of-doors floor. There is the shift and shine of her own, made holy by his. Hushed. Like a well of brightness cast by the full faced goddess-moon and not simply some far-flung star.
Her hands slide back up over his shoulders. A little squeeze. And then she withdraws to let him finish his task. There is no transference of ink from her skin to his clothing. It is dried and as immobile as are his many tattoos. At least for now. In time it will fade, as will this soul-deep weariness, and she will be returned to herself. He calls her radiant and she tells him he is quite dashing. That she likes the cut of him; this said with open appreciation in her eyes.
"You always have cleaned up well," there, something a little more playful. She shifts a bit on her feet, unwanting to stand on one sore and weary place to long. It partners with that shifting sense to her resonance, makes the moment between them seem more fleeting and impermanent than it truly is.
[Silas]
It may be the case that Silas is only reformed in Arianna's presence; even now, there are rumors about him though perhaps they are somewhat muted by time and as good a distance as possible kept from much of the Hermetic community other than on the occasion of the occasional unavoidable Symposium or Collegium. But for whatever reason they are fewer and further between now, and from what she's witnessed of him here, in Denver, he is quite comfortable with the earth under his feet and between his fingers. But whatever the truth of the matter, he is, now, as he is now.
Those arms around him, and the cheek on his head, gain a smile and it's a happy interruption indeed; the wood is set, and his hands find their way to her arms, to bring Arianna's knuckles to his lips for a quick kiss. Then she massages as he returns to the fire, and it's not terribly long before that's set and he's gently steering her towards those grounding things, though with no urgency to it; he understands lavishing in the heady feeling of being nearly spent, and the importance of exploring one's limits the better to surpass them with time, and practice.
"I ran into Pen, not long ago. We had tea."
Once Arianna is settled, he sits next to her with an arm over the couch behind her; there's warmth between them, and fondness, and companionship with little of the heat that's been there since they remet those months ago. Perhaps the Hunt is well restrained, or perhaps every now and then it realizes that the man must be in control.
"Shall I find something to read to you, or simply be here companionably, love?"
[Arianna]
"Did she read you poetry?" This is asked with a knowing sort of smile. "When Pen reads, it is like hearing everything for the first time. It's always like the first times. She reads like I wish to someday draw, or write," said wistfully as they settle in on the couch and she leans in close beside him, slouched enough that her shoulders rest under the sweep of his arm across the couch and she can rest her head against his shoulder and just languish. She pulls her loose hair over the shoulder further from him, so that it will not interfere with the transference of his warmth to her. She has not perfected languishing like Pen has; she is not draped across his lap and peering up at him though half her lashes. Nevertheless, it is an impressive and uninhibited lean.
There is always heat between them, always some sort of magnetic pull seeking center in both of their breasts, but at times it is good to let that be a lower murmur under something... companionable? "Do you think we can be companionable?" she asks, as if it were a more serious inquiry than he might imply. "Never do I think I remember being idle and still with you. Always as companions we have been up to some sort of mischief or adventure. I do not know if I ken how simply companionable would be between us."
She is serious, of a sort, and also musing. The words lilt a little with her amusement. Rise and fall and twist just so. Ari may be exultant but she is also introspective just now, giving up the press of being so out-shining and luminous, radiant he had called her, giving this up instead for something of a softer glow. There is a fire now to take on the responsibility of casting light and shadow; she can ease into the last vestiges of Hallowed ground and sacred moonlight and ask him these things in a tone that is not at all serious, and it can be a musing and also a delicately laid trap.
"After all, you are my childhood friend." The phrase that had so much irked and amused him in the meeting with the other Primals in the park. A perfect mischaracterization of what they were to one another. As she says this, she curls further into him, and slides the palm of one hand across his stomach, feeling the shape of buttons and more formal fabrics beneath her skin. Her hand seems vulgar against the crisp white of his shirt, bespeckled with ink that has dyed her skin and set so completely that it will wear down instead of wash off. It amuses her to see her skin with more color and contrast than his.
"But if not this, what shall I Name thee, Silas?"
[Silas]
"We talked," he says with a shrug, and of course Arianna knows Pen better than he does; she knows that every sentence the Flambeau speaks drips with poetry, with rhythm and rhyme. And that's enough of that, for now; he knows, perhaps, that Pen doesn't precisely approve of him, and if he knows that it's fairly certain that he has a good idea why. But that's not a thing to discuss now in the quiet waning of his Star's Working. There are things both lighter and heavier at once at hand, it seems.
Do you think we can be companionable? This question both puzzles and amuses him, and he rumbles out a low, contented chuckle where he sits with his arm around her. "We were companions long before we were anything else. Partners in adventure and study when we were together. And even after we found each other in more . . . physically intimate ways, we were more than our trysts. Were we not?" This is his truth of it, after all, and their truths are not necessarily the same. "But I think we have ever been more than the word 'friend' can accurately portray. From the very beginning, we were more. Or perhaps we were friends, distilled to something more potent than what the word means now."
The question of what she should name him, though, gives him more pause than the latter; boyfriend seems to immature and common, partner too cool and distant (he doesn't even like that term for same gender couples) and too committed at the same time. It seems, to him, a simple thing. "I am your Hunter. And you are my Star. But that only matters to the two of us, doesn't it? Beyond that, you are dear to me. And what I am to you is for you to define." Though, of course, he rather hopes that his sentiment is reciprocated; it would not be the first time it wasn't, naturally, but for this thing between them to be solely on his side? That's a thing he can scarcely comprehend.
[Arianna]
"Is not adventure a tryst of sorts? Were our hearts not caught up in our chests together?" she asks him. His Star can be difficult, she can be obstinate and unshifting. But this is thoughtful as much as it needles, as much as it seeks and ferrets out some thing, un-shining as of yet, and drags it into her light. She is warm and still beside him, arm still crossed over him, snuggled in close. Her words curl into his shoulder, besmirching the white of his shirt with their mischief. "If I came to you in the moonlight and bade you away on some adventure would it not catch at your heartstrings and lead you away? Surely this is a tryst as much as any batting of eyelashes or come hither smile."
She says this, as she bats her eyelashes a little. As she is curled into the curve of his arm. As her will is burned low, and she is like an ember-ash, a thing eternal and slumbering but always ready to re-spark. And Ari has a known bias toward adventure; surely if she came to him in the moonlight and bade him away it would catch up at his heartstring; it would echo in the cage of his heart. It may not be this way with his other conquests; Arianna doesn't know and, like as not, she does not care. When they are together there are no others, and this extends to conversations by firelight, to confidence, to wistful things.
"And you evade, dear Hunter. Nimble and quick in your words, fleet-tongued as well as fleet-footed, I see. And yes, Hunter dear, you are dear to me," she says, turning just so, such that her teeth nip at his jaw and then her nose nuzzles the place she has so offended. He is marked and claimed, but still she watches him. "But you are the one who has talked of children, and it makes me wonder if we could ever be the sort of companionable which greets one another with a how was your day, or tucks children into their beds at night and watches them from the hallway, or stays so long within one another's orbits that the days ceased to be numbered and counted, and then months, and then years... Might we be companionable? Or is ever alles between us to be spark and flash and breathless and cresting?" She does not have Pen's way with words, but there is meaning and resonance to them.
"Will you grow tired of me?" she asks, her mouth twisting in amusement. Eyes closed again, and chin dropped so that she can rest her head against his shoulder again. "Will you long for quiet days, where your heart is not all caught up in your chest? Will you want someone who does not tug so at your heartstrings? Silas -- I wonder these things, I wonder at my wondering of them. I wonder that I wonder ... which is a little like I am that I am... and I am rambling."
She says.
She does not tell him: Stop my mouth. Instead her fingers trace against his side and her voice trails away and they are left with her idle uncertainties. None of them are pressing; none of them demand answering just now. They are curiosities called forward in the wake of her magnificent working. This conversation is not even why she had called him to her. There has not been enough wine; there has been far too many words. She has left her heart unguarded and for a moment, for the briefest of moments, she does not care at all to ward it against whatever he might say.
[Silas]
"I suppose it is, at that." As stated, he is content with her against him and curled into his side at least for now, though ever there is the impression of waiting and being alert for prey. Nibbling and nuzzling get a kiss - deep, but not particularly heated or intense beyond the features of them being who they are. Despite the feeling of energies reigned in, Silas seems to have no trouble with companionship just now. But then, "I speak of children because I have always seen them, I suppose, around the edges; children and hounds and a home and hearth. And land, too, if I'm honest; to work, and to bring to fruition. Not unlike my Aunt's farm, I suppose - the city is well enough, but that's part of why I came here. You can be near to the city and outside of it at the same time, without quite the same awful traffic as so many similar places."
This is pragmatism at its finest, and perhaps more of such than Arianna has witnessed from Silas before now, but then there's a question that calls for fancy and conjecture and contemplation all at once.
"Some part of us has known the other since before we met, I think. We were not brought together just by the hands of our parents, were we? And I think thus that some part of our hearts will always be caught up in our chests in the presence of each other. But I like this, sitting here in comfort with wine before a fire, as much as I like adventuring or coupling. Do you? Or will you grow tired of me in such situations?"
Because this is a mutual concern, after all. He knows as well as she of their heat and how much her presence burns within him when they are together.
"Or will we play games with my roommates or Cherie at The Common Cup, or walk Damon and Pythias through the park, or other quiet pastimes without being consumed?"
[Arianna]
"As if," she says, with an aire of amusement underlying each lilting syllable, "My heart could ever tire of you. As if it might one day betray itself and hie off toward some other home. I have been called fickle-hearted, you know, but I think it isn't so. How does one heart lose its love of another? Year pass and still it is the same: I see you, and my heart leaps forward even before my feet. It does not wait on counsel from my mind; it will not heed reason or restraint. It wants what it wants and is relentless in this wanting."
This said, she exhales, as if it were a heavy thing to say. A thing weighed down by its ill-reasoned nature. A thing too dangerous to leave burning in her breast and thus expelled to air out its consequence. Surely it is a thing he already knows, she thinks. Because she is like a fool for him, she who has called him Scoundrel and also Knave and possibly a host of other unmentionable things. She who spread her knees for him that first time with so very little thought. She could spend lifetimes recounting the folly of her heart when they were younger, or even now. Has she not made the same glorious mistakes, in slightly more adult trappings? There is doubt, then, and perhaps it is the heaviness she expels.
Her train of thought had gotten serious. It had stated as a playful thing and now it was a path limned with thorns and briar-berries. She shakes her head a little to clear and finds she cannot so easily as she might wish to. Thankfully there is the flicker of firelight to soothe and calm. There is the warmth of him -- or is it folly to indulge in the warmth of him? Rue.
"Sometimes it scares me," she confesses. This seems the surest way forward through the woods.
[Silas]
There's a deep breath in through his nose, and let out slowly through his mouth - this is followed by a sip of the wine that surely they poured before getting into this position. His hand runs gently over her back, pausing at places that hold tension to apply just a little more pressure to relieve some of it. This has been a thing he does well for quite some time, and his skills have certainly not lessened. He is quiet for a long moment, holding the taste of wine in his mouth before he swallows.
Before he answers.
"There have been times that I found it terrifying." There's a pause, and it's easy enough to remember some times that might have achieved such heights, though difficult to imagine Silas afraid of anything, ever. "But it has always been a part of us, this thing - whatever it is. And I won't run from it, when I believe that though it's frightened me more than anything else, it's also made me happier than anything else. So if we are truly both going to be here, in the same place, I would like to explore this further and see where it takes us."
It seems like a graceful pause, but it's not as certain in its hesitancy as all that. Silas puts on a good show, as one who has learned over years not to expose his weaknesses if it can be helped.
"If, of course, you would like to do the same. If not - it was an oath made when we were young. People grow and change, as do their ideas for what they want."
[Arianna]
She had not bothered with pouring him his own glass. Like as not, he had rescued hers from the table as they settled onto the couch. The wine bottle had found its way up onto that surface as well, safely away from the tangle of their feet. She feels the breath as he draws it in, feels the shift of his ribcage and marks it for the cautiousness in such preparation. She marks, too, the way it is slowly released, carefully, cautiously, as if she would not be able to feel the shape of his thoughts from this far away. There is a long moment between her confession and his. In this pause, the fireplace crackles, her hand is still and warm against his side: it does not cajole through touches; it is reserved.
With his fingers splayed so closely to her spine, he can feel the way she mirrors this hesitancy, and Arianna is not someone he has known to look before she leaps. It is not so much that she is fearless as that she refuses to let fear stand between her and some great adventure. Still her breath is held in her chest for overlong, keeping her unnaturally still beneath his palm.
"I have not spent as much time thinking on it as you have," she confesses, and the weight of it is heavy in her chest. Still she muses, and the words are oddly canted, considered as she speaks them and not composed before. "On children, or land, or whether we work it. I have not looked forward with such specificity, because what is looking forward so sharply for unless you know with whom you will be journeying onward? Why would I imagine a life with children, if I did not have you beside me? Why would I imagine our home, if you were not with me and we were therefore apart?"
She is bent low tonight, a low moon slung against the horizon, til it is the color of maize, til it is flattened by the atmosphere and made huge by refraction. Her light gentled and made warm and invited. Not so remote and argent; not so untouchably bright. She is almost merely human, stripped of her glamours and radiance to nest lazy and warm against his side.
"I want the warmth we have together. I want the way my heart leaps when I see you, whether it has been a minute, or a day, or years since we were last together. I want the surety of how I fall asleep beside you, and the ready adventuring we have always known. But I, too, want nights spent around the table with Nick and Pen and all of us laughing. I want a home to return to, but never the fear of setting out for points unknown. I want to suck the marrow from bones, and read the poetry of the stars, and touch the crests of mountains and to feel like I am soaring.
"I want to share that with you. I want that with you."
Her fingers curl into the fabric of his shirt at his side. Her voice is lower now, and he might strain a bit to hear it clearly. "I have never considered myself the mothering type. And when you asked if I was with your child, it frightened me. Do you remember? And yet, the more I've listened to you talk of them, the more I find myself at peace with the thought of bearing your children. Happy, even, at the idea that we might have a family together some day. Not to-day, but some day. If you would still love me..."
Her breath catches on something and she does not finish the thought. Even after she exhales past that hitch, she doesn't finish the thought. It hangs, there, testament to how unpracticed and uncertain she is in matters of her heart. Ari does not look up to him. Instead she keeps her gaze trained on the fireplace, or closes her eyes.
"And then, I think, we must have things all out of order. Shouldn't I know the shape of your lashes when you are asleep, or how you take your tea in the mornings, or what it means when you furrow your brow just so whilst looking over some bed in your garden? Shouldn't I better know the shape of your dreams, and the taste of your mouth, before I ache to grow your life within me? I guess, I guess what I am saying, Si' is that I would, too, like to see where this might go, but that my heart is over-sure that it already knows the ending. It is the middle that confounds me, how we get from here to there."
Holy Gods, the old and the new, does she ever ramble. And she is not in a position where he might easily stop her mouth in their more traditional way. He would have to set his (her) glass aside, and turn to face her, take her face up in his hands and kiss her, soundly, to stop this rush of words and worries and untempered thoughts. Beneath it all is the current of surety of how strongly she does feel for him, that she knows her heart is his beyond reason. Above it is the frenzy of reason seeking to impose itself into matters of the heart. She cannot bring them together, just yet. Her head tells her to be cautious, to be untrusting. Her heart tells her that there is no time left to waste.
[Silas]
Now, he leans forward and refills the glass - offers her some, that they might share the glass - then resettles in his spot. There's a slight furrow to his brow as he considers his answer; in truth, it's not something he's put much conscious thought into, however it may seem.
"These are not things I think on, Stella, but things I know. I know that I will have a wife and children and hounds and land as much as I know that my eyes are blue and my hair is brown. But I had never considered that they might be with anyone but you, even in the times we were apart." There's a pause, then, time for a large draught from the glass, before he continues. "I know the shape of you against me, and how we fit together; that hasn't changed much, has it? I asked about a child in a heated moment without thought for what had happened or . . . well, anything else, really. I am not in the rush that I appear to be."
She was afraid - is afraid, perhaps - in a way that Silas has never been, has never had to be. There are things that just are, to him, and this is one of them . . . or has been, for much of his life. Her uncertainty, though, casts it in a new light.
"I have loved you since I was six, perhaps longer; I can't remember a time that I didn't love you, can only barely remember a time that I didn't know you. But even then, I think I knew your face, or your light. Why is that? And how? I spoke of this with Aunt Kae and Uncle Will once, when you and I were angry and apart, but they had little in the way of answers. Sometimes I hate that this came from Mother's meddling, and sometimes - when things are well between us - I could kiss her for it."
He settles into quiet then, and is a squirmy sort of uncomfortable; so rarely is he anything other than supremely confident in visage that this is a novelty. It holds brooding around the edges, but is not discontent in it.
[Arianna]
"I do not think this is of your Mother's meddling." She accepts the glass from him as she resettles, a little apart from him. She brings one knee up onto the couch between them so that she is turned to face him, but also so that some part of her is still pressed against some part of him. It is her shin against his hip and thigh, and then her foot resting near his on the floor. She holds the chalice in both hands, as if it is an offering, as if she consecrates it with her words and touch. "She is not Adept with Ars Temporis or so delicate in Ars Mentis, is she? How could she have taught you the shape of my face before we met? Sent you to me with a flower, yes, but made me so insensibly in love with you or you with me? This is beyond her scope. And even as she wills or wants it, she would not trust the bending of your Will to a Spirit or Seraphim. No. This may be to her delight, but I do not think the Lady Robinson the architect of our affections."
A pause. The corner of her mouth curls slightly and she looks to him with wanton mischief in her eyes.
"For... see? The fire does not flare at her Naming, nor has my house been reduced to cinder-ash and smoke in doubting her."
His Star is wicked, even in this most serious of moments. And so, now, having pronounced the limited scope of Maga Robinson Adept Major bani Flambeau's reach, having proscribed her influence to a smaller sphere, Arianna drinks deeply of the wine, holding the glass still as a chalice, between both hands, as if it were a thing consecrated in the moonlight, made holy by their fellowship. As if it might steady her. When she lowers the glass, she rolls the bowl of it slowly between her palms and watches the shift of the liquid inside.
"Perhaps I am not so certain because I have feared at least once before that I had lost you. My heart sundered and broke to pieces when I heard, so long ago now, that the Smythe girl was carrying your child." She says this, looking down into the wine, and the words are like ash in her mouth, dull tasting, dry and difficult to pass. "Some part of you would always be hers, I knew it, and I could not bring myself to share you with her, and so all parts of you would be lost and it broke me, Silas. It broke that part of me that knew these things."
She drinks again. Less deeply. And uses her thumb to catch the dribble of wine that escapes the corner of her mouth. This is return to her mouth, licked clear. Her hands and arms are still tattooed with ink from her project. There is a smudge of it on her face as well. She is speckled and marked in ways that bend toward her physical Arts.
She drinks again. Less deeply. And uses her thumb to catch the dribble of wine that escapes the corner of her mouth. This is return to her mouth, licked clear. Her hands and arms are still tattooed with ink from her project. There is a smudge of it on her face as well. She is speckled and marked in ways that bend toward her physical Arts.
"I lay no claims to you when we are apart, but still... what happens then still touches me. And I, for my part, have not loved another. Lain with once, or maybe twice, in times when the press of the world must be forgotten, when the night was too black and too deep to go to sleep alone." He does not know about the Chorister who Fell; he does not know about the wreck she left in her wake, how it cast his Star into darkness and made strangers of the family of her heart for some time. But he can imagine that there may such things in their world which may dim Arianna's brightness for awhile.
She offers him back the wine and, though it is an awkward place, she leaves off speaking. What else is there to be said: she has not loved another; she loved him so completely that his good fortune with another broke her; and yet she is beside him now. Yet she offers him this cup in fellowship.
[Silas]
"My mother is not so strong as all that in Ars Temporis or Ars Mentis, it's true. Her greatest strengths are Essentiae and Vis." And that's enough about Maga Robinson, all told; while Silas is certainly not one to let fear guide him, he has a healthy wariness of much to do with his mother. His Star is wicked, indeed, and it brings a levity that had been missing for a moment - he tickles her, lightly, and kisses her forehead before she shifts positions.
Then, though, the conversation shifts back to seriousness, and he settles back to watch her as she thinks and speaks. She'd feared she lost him and he'd been almost certain he had that first time, although not all of the whys and wherefores therein. This confession brings his hand to her knee to rest, warm and comforting. "When I saw you then, I was so certain it would be the last time. I don't know if you heard, but the child wasn't mine." This is not an excuse or justification, but information. "We never did find out whose it was. And Mother was furious at the deceit." That fury hadn't only been directed at Katja, but this isn't a thing that Silas specifies. And had the child been his, that would not necessarily have been his good fortune, all things considered. "The last I heard, she was somewhere in Canada, and married. Congratulations to all of them, I suppose."
His hand is still on her knee, only his thumb moving, lightly tracing the weave of her trousers - and so the wine glass is accepted with one hand, and sipped before he replies to the rest.
"You have always laid claim to me, whether you knew it or not. I have laid with others, been fond of others, but loved? No, not a one. Only you." He doesn't know if he could, only that he hasn't tried, that none calls his heart the way she does, that none have been the flame to which he flies. And now, again, we have a silence that is filled by the drinking of wine, and a man who is uncertain of how to break it. There is so much between them said and unsaid, known and unknown.
[Arianna]
"I hadn't heard," she says. Her voice is quiet and it is unclear for a moment whether she is referring to Katja's happy nuptials or the provenance of her child or perhaps to both, but when some unmarked tension begins to bled out of her she is grateful that she is no longer holding the wine glass. It would tremble in her hands; she cannot still the wash of relief and heartache that bleeds out from her. It leaves little question of how strongly this revelation has moved her. Bereft of things to hold, her hands close to loose fists, held emptily and impotent in her lap.
All of these years she has held this question open between them. It was open and unanswered still when she made her Oath to him. To have it closed it a relief; it gladdens her; it is a bittersweet gladness. She heard the rest of what he had said, but could not process it. The child wasn't mine. He said, and it echoes in her heart and head, over and over, until the words are like nothing, until they are dust, until they are like mortar to shore up the cracked and wounded places in her heart, until they are seamed in and around this wound as a salve that might make as if it never were un-seamed.
Belatedly, she says, "Mmm, and also joy be to their house." Yes, congratulations and joy, this is what is due a happily married couple and she should muster at least a tribute made of words, though they are hollow toned and half-heartedly spoken. There is no love lost between Arianna and Katja, who had engineered such suffering for the Giametti girl.
His hand is on her knee, so he probably feels her shift before he registers any visual cue that she is moving. She pushes up and away from the couch, standing. It draws away attention from the way her hands come to her face, to brush away a dampness at her eyes. But the dampness will not be quelled by a simple brushing away. It is persistent and resurfaces. It is damnable and so clear that he has caught the better of her. She wanders far enough to stand near the fire, to feel its warmth press into her skin. Again, she reaches up to wipe a tear away from her eye -- this repetition makes it far more likely that he will catch her out at it.
"Damnit, Silas," she says, softly, and mostly for the fire's hearing. It snaps and shifts and dances for her, but that does not quiet her thoughts. Ari no longer bothers with dropping her hands to her sides after brushing tears away. Instead she rounds her shoulders so that she can keep her hands close to her traitorous eyes, fingers steepled together, thumbs tucked under her chin and index fingertips on her nose. She breathes out into the little cave made by her hands. It is tremulous.
"Why is this so hard?" she asks him, aloud, and her voice ripples with the overwhelming emotion that she feels. And of course, it is difficult, because they are airing half a lifetime of secrets between them in the space of one night. And it is difficult because she has burned her own wick so low and so completely. "And how wicked am I?" she asks, letting her hands drop away again as she turns to look at him. "That I find relief and gladness in your news. That you want children and yet, here am I, overtaken with relief that it is not yet so. Tread softly, you had said, for I tread upon your dreams and yet..."
There is no hiding now that a few stray tears have become the outrun of some deeper melting frozen floe.
"Come here..." she says, and the words are almost to faint to hear, but they are echoed by the hand she extends toward him. "If you will still come here. Then come here and hold me and stop this weeping madness in me. It is vulgar and unseemly. Were you not here, I would spell it from myself. But you are here, aren't you? I am not dreaming?"
[Silas]
As much as he knows he will have children one day, maybe even wants them, Silas is not particularly displeased that Katja's child is not his - and so there is more wondering at Arianna's reaction than there is upset with her being happy to find he is, thus far, childless. And so he watches her when she rises, taking time to appreciate and understand her bearing and mood before he rises as well, the better to set aside the wine glass, and even pace a few steps.
There has been a lot aired in one evening, when Arianna's wick is burned low.
"It is so hard because we have been irate and separate for so long. We have grown firm in our independence of each other, I think." They are strong willed (and strong Willed) people, these two, so stubborn when each is sure of the correctness of his or her stance. And he . . . well, Silas is confused. Arianna doesn't slip into mundane profanities often, and she cries even less. This is a reaction he doesn't understand, to the release of a tension he hadn't known she was holding, and so Silas is uncertain what to do, until . . .
Come here ...
And of course he does (perhaps despite a voice in his head that she can't hear), the better to wrap his arms around her and hold her close, to do what he can. "I will still come to you. And I am here, I assure you, and crying is sometimes a necessity. Though . . . are you well?"
This is not the first time he's asked her this, but this time what he's really asking is what's wrong, and if there's something he can do to fix it.
[Arianna]
His arms wrap around her shoulders and hers duck lower, to scoop in under his at his waist. Then her palms slide up, over his dress shirt, across the planes of his back, until she has pulled him soundly against her and tipped her head forward so her brow rests at his collarbone and her breath moves into the thin space between them. So that her tears are caught by his shirt, and the white of it goes translucent with them.
"I have been so angry with you for so very long about this child that I am nearly sick with finding that it wasn't so..."
Of course, she had never known for certain that it was so, but the uncertainty of it, the shadow it cast between them had been palpable and deep. She had been so acutely wounded when they parted, and scathingly angry to overshadow that ache. As children of Flambeau elders, neither were careful to keep their tongues or tempers. Now, though, there is no anger to bastion her heart against the sway of this revelation. There is only his embrace, and the warmth of firelight, and some terrifying fluttering thing. Some small hope.
It is enough to make her stomach queasy. Hope is a miserably flighty thing.
If she says any more, surely, then she will let it escape from her breast. Hope will sneak out between her teeth; it will ease out with her breath; it will be gone and she is not sure that she would be better for its leaving. So she remains, curled into him and holding to him, eyes shut and still streaming tears, without so much explanation for it beyond half a lifetime of sorrows and anger and fears escaping in an instant. If he could touch her mind he'd find it in a marvelous state of disarray. Ironically after she had spent the better part of a day making Talismans to ward the mind against this sort of coming undone.
The thought strikes her as funny, and she huffs out a single, unexplained chuckle. But in her state it sounds quite more likely like a sob. Which is utterly undignified, and the sound of it draws her still, draws her rigid in his arms for a moment before she yields and again begins to relax, to shift so that her face is turned and her ear is over his heart and the sound of it beating is louder than the sniffling of her nose and she is kept close. Her arms slide down to encircle his waist instead and after all this time, she is kept close and without the anger and the distance between them, however artfully kept it had been.
After some interminable time, if he has not broken this half-silence between them, she will start to sway gently. From foot to foot. Not rocking as if she has come completely undone; with a better rhythm to it; as if she were dancing to some unheard tune. With her arms around his waist, and her ear pressed over his heart, and the swell of moonlight streaming in through the windows of the great room, in the arch of firelight cast outward from the hearth. Neither here, nor there. Neither dancing, nor standing. It gives some movement to the weight of all they have between them. It gives them a new place to start in their courtship of each other.
[Silas]
The half-silence has not been broken, and still Silas holds his Star close; he is the earth and sun and she is the moon and stars and in moments like this it is clear to anyone observing (except perhaps the two of them) how much they compliment each other. It's not until they begin swaying together to music that only they can hear that he murmurs, "I am your Knave, your Scoundrel. Yours alone." Because when they are together, Silas and Arianna, they are together - to the exclusion of all others. Thus it has been for nearly half their lives, regardless of what other things they've done in their time apart, or with whom they've laid.
So it is that they exist in each other's arms for minutes, hours, days, however long is unclear before Silas moves one hand to take Arianna's chin to draw her eyes up to his so that they are looking at each other when he says again, "I have always loved you." Then, there's leaning in to kiss her gently, sweetly. There is heat and intensity inherent to them, but it is a quiet thing kept to the back in favor of sanctifying this thing returned to them. And when their lips break from each other? It's dancing to faerie music as long as Arianna likes, just to hold her that much longer. He is strong and firm, there, as he has always been.
[Arianna]
She cannot remember the last time he has held her like this. Surely he has; surely when they were young and Katja had engineered such a terrible offensive. Or surely when the ice first thawed -- no, not then. Not then or any day after. Ari's heart had always been held a little apart, and he had only seen her when she was sure and confident and collected. She would not be this raw and vulnerable before him after they way they split when they were young. Perhaps it has been half a lifetime since he held her this way; perhaps it is the first time.
In short time, the dripping of her eyes relents. Not before it has caused some treacherous shift in the state of her sinuses, or ringed her eyes with an unfamiliar redness, but before it has emptied her of whatever low reserve she had left. She is still a moon drawn down so far that he might hold her, still broad and mellow maize on the horizon, still warmer than argent, still more accessible than she should be. When he tips her chin upward, there is no slick of mercury to her eyes, nothing gating back the swarm of feelings in her heart and keeping him from seeing them. She is too low to be removed and resplendent; he holds the whole of her in that one hand, in the way it touches the point of her chin.
"Stay..." she bids him. On another night it would have been some off the cuff question, said with some sense of elegance and indifference -- You should stay, Silas -- and obvious innuendo. Tonight, though, it is at least as much request as it is demand. Paired as it is with the sense that she may finally believe him (I have always loved you), and the way her words have echoed the sentiment back to him without stating it so plainly, how could he refuse her?
There is dancing to faerie music, and drinking of shared wine, and lying companionably and intertwined on her sofa until the fire is burnt low and reduced to ember-ash and glow. And when she is curled into bed beside him, with her head on his shoulder and her hand on his heart, tucked in close and near to sleeping, she repeats the request. (Stay.) As if he would leave her side now?
No.
Stay. Perhaps for this night. It is comfortable and safe to think she means something so immediate and simple. But that would not be the whole of it; that would leave his understanding of her request incomplete. Just as he had murmured to her of children when he was on the crest of waking, so she breathes out a sense of ever and always as she slips away to sleeping. The moonlight coming in through the windows catches the gleam of silver around her finger. It burnishes the slip of gold around his, just visible as his arm around her shoulders pulls her closer to him for just a moment. Their echoes do not move only one way in time. What his heart will call foreshadowing, then, is an echo coming back to meet him now: he will hold her like this, with his heart as full and truly tested, with the gleam of metal around their fingers; he will name her not only his Star, but also ...
Sleep captures them, and pulls them under Morpheus's influence. Whatever other foresight he might have can be cast in morning light as nothing more than oneiromancy. Little more than dreaming.
