he’s my friend… my best friend 💜

Stick hidden behind his back, he waited for Rayla to let her guard down. It took a while, since she was always paranoid, but eventually her swords swung lower and her posture drooped. Callum smiled mischievously and quickly snapped the stick in half. 

Crack!

It was louder than he meant it to be, but that worked fine for his intents and purposes. Rayla immediately spun around, swords raised to their usual fighting position, and ears… Callum grinned. Hypothesis proven correct. 

Rayla looked down at the two stick halves in his hand, then back up at his grinning face. She shot him a glare that would’ve come in handy about a week ago. To melt the ice, that is. “What was that for?!” she demanded, pointing her blades angrily at the ground so she wouldn’t accidentally behead him. 

“Just testing something,” Callum replied coyly, a smug smile lingering on his face. 

He dropped the broken sticks to the ground. Rayla scowled, turning to walk away. As she did, Callum pulled out his sketchbook and began doing some quick drawings to record his findings. He got halfway through the base shape of a second head when he ran smack into Rayla, who had spun around and stopped without him noticing. 

He yelped, fumbling his charcoal and dropping his sketchbook until it hung taut in front of him on its strap. He said a silent thank you to his stepdad for the ingenious design and reached down past Rayla to pick up his charcoal. 

“Why’d you stop?” he asked, annoyed. 

“What’re you drawing?” she shot back, scowl still fierce. 

He held up his sketchbook innocently. As she took it, Callum watched her visage transformed from anger to utter confusion. She squinted. 

“You’re… drawing my ears?” 

Callum grinned, nodding his head enthusiastically. He leaned in for emphasis before enunciating his wonderful discovery.

“They move.”

He leaned back self-satisfactorily, but Rayla’s face retained a blank, befuddled expression. 

“What?” 

“Your ears!” he reaffirmed enthusiastically, “They move!” 

She blinked as if finally registering what he was saying, then glared at him even harder. 

“They do not!” 

“Yes, they do. See, look,” he grabbed his sketchbook away from her and quickly finished his sketch. He pointed to each drawing in turn and explained. 

“When you’re relaxed, your ears look like this, like, pointing at a a light upwards angle towards the back of your head, but when you get scared, they lay flat, like a cat’s!” 

He grinned, hoping to see her expression brighten. It did not. 

“That’s a load of rubbish,” Rayla asserted, “My ears don’t move, and they definitely don’t move ‘like a cat’s.’ ” 

She made her fingers into quotation marks in the air around his words, further ridiculing his scientific breakthrough. He frowned, then brightened, tucking his charcoal into his sketchbook and letting them fall back to his side. “I’ll prove it to you, watch!” 

“I’m not going to fall for the stick trick agai— what are you doing?” 

He moved closer to her and held his hands up on either side of her face, but paused when she questioned his intent. 

“Oh, right, sorry, um, is it okay if I touch you?” 

She gave him a horrified look for a split second, then cleared her throat and nodded. He gently placed his fingertips on the points of her ears. 

“See, right now you’re relaxed, so your ears are… well that’s odd.” 

Callum frowned as her ears dipped down below where his fingertips were touching, but not to a flat angle like he was used to. He glanced back at her face and found that her cheeks were bright red. Huh. He’d never seen that happen before. Had something scared her that his human ears couldn’t hear? Or was she sick, like on the boat in the river? He was about to voice his questions when Ezran piped up from a ways ahead of them. 

“Callum, Rayla, what’s taking you guys so long?” the kid complained.  

Rayla immediately jumped backwards, turning away from him and hiding her face behind a hand. He noticed that the tips of her ears were also pink, and still pointed more downwards than was normal. What could’ve caused that? 

“Coming!” she called, racing to catch up. 

The stars carried fond memories for Callum, of nighttimes spent with his first dad, and later with his mom, giggling around campfires and naming constellations. He had always loved stargazing. It was a fact that Rayla had discovered on their trip to the Starscraper. She had tried to exploit it tonight, to take his mind off of other worries by proposing a late picnic on a clear night. 

And it was helping, a little. Rayla was curled up next to him with her head on his chest, her breathing slow and steady but not quite asleep. Her warmth was a constant comfort, and he had to withhold himself from kissing her forehead every five seconds. He took a moment and let his eyes wander across the curve of her horns and the small braid that hadn’t quite been untangled from her hair. He smiled at her, rubbing his thumb gently across her back before returning his attention to the vastness of the cosmos. How many stars were there, anyway?

It wasn’t a question that pertained to Callum much. He was only really worried about eleven of those stars. He moved his eyes around and picked them out. He knew all of their names, of course, and he checked their positions every night before bed. They seemed to be especially bright tonight, as though they were taunting him. When his focus drifted away from them, he could swear he saw them moving out of the corner of his eye. Inching closer and closer together, like grains of sand spilling into the empty half of an hourglass, counting down the time he had left to live. 

He was being dramatic, of course. They still had 6 years, 11 months, and 24 days before the stars aligned. Before he returned. Callum did the math again in his head, although he had the numbers memorized by now. In just under seven years, he would be twenty-four. Rayla, twenty-five. Ezran… nineteen. 

Nineteen. So old, relative to now, but so young in the grand scheme of life. Only two years older than Callum was now. Ezran didn’t deserve to have to count the days until his nineteenth year of life with apprehension rather than excitement. He deserved a life without fear, without constant fruitless planning, without the pressure of a throne, and a broken kingdom, and a new city underway… he deserved to just be a kid. 

But then, none of them had deserved any of what had happened to them at such young ages. Callum hadn’t deserved to lose his parents, nor Rayla hers. Soren hadn’t deserved the coldness of his father. That was the thing about the world, it didn’t tend to give you what you deserved. 

Rayla sighed contentedly and Callum brought himself back to the present. He checked the stars again. Was he up there right now, biding his time? Was he waiting as anxiously as the rest of them? Could he see what they were planning? Callum had never found anything to indicate that Startouch elves were omniscient, but it wasn’t the most thoroughly researched subject in Xadia. Maybe the scholars had missed something, maybe when Startouch elves were returned to the heavens they gained a sort of presence that couldn’t be accurately described in academia. Maybe their fruitless planning was utterly pointless anyway, because Aaravos already knew about all of it due to some special power he had as a star. Or worse, maybe he could see through Callum’s corrupted eyes right now, and—

“Callum?” 

Rayla’s whisper snapped him out of his spiral. He focused his eyes on her face, her concern visible even in the low light. 

“Yeah?” he replied softly, trying to sound calm. 

“Are you okay? Your heart started racing.” 

“Oh, sorry. Did I disturb you?” 

“I wasn’t pointing it out because you ‘disturbed’ me, dummy, I was pointing it out because I’m worried about you.” She sat up all the way and looked down at him, her hair falling around her face in a way that made her look angelic. “Are you okay?” 

He shrugged. “Just thinking.” 

“About?” 

“What am I ever thinking about?” 

“Oh.” She frowned. “I had hoped that stargazing would take your mind off of that, not bring it more into focus.” 

“Sorry.”

She smacked him lightly on the chest. “Stop apologizing, or I swear I’ll—”

“Okay, okay,” he laughed. “I guess I just… feel bad for ruining tonight. It was supposed to be something peaceful, for just us, but, I don’t know, he just- he overshadows everything. He spoils everything good.” 

Rayla frowned, running her thumb across his forehead gently and brushing a white strand of hair to the side. 

“Don’t let him ruin stargazing for you, Callum. He doesn’t deserve to.” 

There was that word again. Callum sighed. “I wish it were that easy. I just don’t think I can look at the stars tonight without thinking about him.” 

Rayla smiled sweetly. “Then don’t look at the stars.” 

Callum cocked his head. “What? But the whole reason we came was—”

“Close your eyes.” 

It was an order, not a suggestion, so Callum complied. 

“Open your mouth.” 

He frowned, eyebrows furrowed in confusion. He trusted her, though, so he opened his jaw a little, and felt something small and cool drop into it. He pressed it against the roof of his mouth, covering his tastebuds with the distinctive tart juice of something he associated with Rayla. 

“You brought moonberries?” he mumbled, mouth still full. 

She giggled. “What sort of picnic would it be without any food?” 

Callum smiled, opening his eyes and propping himself up to see that she had pulled a small basket out of a nearby bush. She held up another one and he obliged, opening his mouth and letting her place it delicately inside. She grinned at him, and he grinned back. 

“When did you set this up?” he asked. 

She shrugged nonchalantly, “A few days ago.” 

“A few days!? Rayla, that’s—”

She shushed him, putting a finger to his lips. “Callum, people are sleeping.” 

He nodded and she removed her finger, allowing him to continue in a whisper. “Rayla, that’s the sweetest thing anyone has ever done for me.” 

She gave him a playful scowl. “Sweeter than when we held a forage feast in your honor?” 

“Sorry, that’s not what I was—”

“Up bup up, what’d I say about apologizing?” 

“I’m not sure, actually, I kind of interrupted you earlier.” 

“Well what I meant to say,” she scooted closer to him, until their legs brushed up against each other, “Was if you keep apologizing, I swear I’ll have to shut you up.” 

She gave him a sly smirk. The starlight illuminated her face with its soft glow, and Callum felt his insides flutter. He grinned. 

“I mean, if that’s what it takes, I guess I— mmph.”

She put her hands on either side of his face and pull him into a kiss. He melted against her lips, putting his arm around her waist and tugging her tunic to place her more on top of him. She pulled away after a moment and giggled into the air between them, their noses still touching. 

“You taste like moonberries.”

“I wonder why.” He smiled against her lips, then pulled back a little further. He raised a hand to tuck a loose strand of hair back behind her ear, then stared into her beautiful lilac eyes. 

“Thank you,” he whispered, “for tonight.” 

“Of course.” She hummed contentedly and curled back down into his chest. 

Callum gave into the urge to kiss her on the forehead, then laid them both back down on the blanket. He looked at the sky for a moment before deciding it would be better to close his eyes and enjoy the present with the love of his life.