Rayllum Propaganda

you guys wanna do some moon-synced fertility/menstrual cycle math with me? you know how the moon is new in Moonless Night? If we go with the fanon idea that Moonshadow elves ovulate on the full moon...poor bby girl gets potential first time sabotaged by her baby box 😭 /ref

Rayla smiled and looked over at her boyfriend. Callum was sitting on the other side of the sofa, leaving a generous space between them, with his sketchbook and charcoal out. She admired him while he drew. Sometimes he was so concentrated on what he was drawing that his face would scrunch up, while other times he barely looked like he was trying. Like this was just second nature to him. 

She looked back up at her parents, who were passing plates wordlessly between them. They were so accustomed to each other that, even after two full years apart, they hardly needed to communicate. They just worked with the rhythm of two people so in love. Would her and Callum be like this, someday? Doing dishes and laundry quietly, their love filling in the silence? Would they have a child, sitting and watching them work, wondering these same thoughts? She hoped so. She watched Runaan gently grab Ethari’s elbow. 

“I’m going to get some fresh air quick,” the former assassin said softly, “I’ll be right back.” 

“Don’t worry, my heart, I’m not going anywhere,” Ethari replied. 

The two shared a brief kiss, and Runaan slipped out the front door. Rayla frowned. 

“Why don’t we do that?” she asked, turning to face Callum again.

“Hm?” Callum looked up from his work, then glanced at Ethari, confused. “You mean the dishes? I thought your dads requested it, so that they could spend some time together.” 

“Not the dishes,” Rayla corrected, “The names.” 

Callum frowned. “Names?” 

“Yeah, y’know, like pet-names.” 

“You…want to call me your pet?” Callum’s face turned amusingly pink. 

 Rayla shot him a sidelong glance, tucking that reaction into her brain for later. 

“Nicknames, Callum. Why don’t we have nicknames for each other?” 

“Oh!” Callum chuckled nervously, “Nicknames, right. Nicknames. Um…” 

He tapped his charcoal against his chin thoughtfully. Rayla smirked as she noticed that he was holding the wrong end of it, leaving a black mark behind on his skin. She didn’t say anything. It was cute. 

“There was that one time you called me ‘Mr. Mage,’” he offered up unhelpfully. 

“I don’t mean platonic nicknames, Callum, I mean like… cute, romantic ones.” 

“Hm. You’re right, we don’t really have any of those.” He thought about it for a moment longer, then smiled at her. “Do you want to…try some?”  

“Sure. Um, what are you drawing, babe?” 

Callum winced. 

“Yeah, that wasn’t it,” Rayla agreed. “How about… what are you drawing, love?” 

Callum blushed a little bit, smiling. 

“I like that one.” 

“Me too.” Rayla raised her eyebrows at him. “Are you… going to tell me what you’re drawing?” 

“Oh! Right,” Callum held up his sketchbook. 

It was a beautiful sketch of his younger brother, standing proud and tall. Rayla frowned, concern knitting its way into her eyebrows. 

“Are you alright, love?” 

“Yeah,” he shrugged to brush her off, turning back to his work. “Yeah, I’ll be fine.” 

She kept her eyes on him, but stayed quiet. She knew that sometimes talking about things took time. Callum smiled. 

“I think you were right about nicknames,” he said, eyes still on his sketchbook, “That felt… nice.” 

She smiled. “I’m glad. It’s your turn now, though.” 

He looked up, surprised. 

“What, I can’t just call you ‘love’ too?” 

“Well you could, and I won’t stop you if you do, but this way you’ll have options.” 

He nodded. He face scrunched up in concentrated thought. Rayla grinned. It was always adorable  when he did that. A few seconds later his expression softened. He looked up at her; eyes bright, but melancholy. 

“My stepdad used to call my mom his light,” he said softly. 

Rayla stilled. Callum rarely talked about his parents. Whenever he did, his voice was filled with such reverence. It felt intimate to Rayla. The details he held were sacred to him; hearing them was like being invited to the most special place of worship. 

“Would you like that, my light?” 

Rayla blushed. She had thought it would feel cheesy or over the top, but it actually made her feel tingly inside. Like he was all hers. Callum grinned. 

“You liked that one, didn’t you?” 

“Maybe…” Rayla admitted.

Callum set his sketchbook and charcoal down on the table in front of the couch. 

“My light,” 

He slid across the sofa, closing the gap between them. Rayla felt her cheeks grow redder.

“My truth,” 

He grabbed her hand, lifting it to his face and planting a kiss inside her palm. 

“My world,” 

He wrapped his other hand around her waist, pulling her closer. The tingly sensation grew, the way it always did when he was this close. 

“My everything,” he whispered, inches away from her face now. 

Rayla let her eyes flutter closed, anticipating the kiss and the rush of warmth that always accompanied it. She leaned forward slowly. 

Someone cleared their throat. 

Callum immediately jumped back, returning to his earlier position farther away from her. Rayla glared fiercely at her dad. Runaan turned slightly to address Callum. 

“You have charcoal on your chin.” 

Runaan walked away. Callum’s eyes went wide and his cheeks turned red. He quickly raised his hands to his chin, then groaned as his fingers pulled away with black smudged on them. He threw his head back against the couch in defeat and looked over at her across the distance between them. 

“Your dads probably think I’m a loser, huh?” 

“Maybe,” Rayla giggled, “but you’re my loser.” 

Callum’s mouth opened, then shut wordlessly. 

“I’m… not sure how I feel about that one,” he admitted after a moment. 

“You’ll get used to it.” Rayla reached over and grabbed his hand, grazing his knuckles with her lips. 

“Love,” she added, mumbling it against his fingers.  

His cheeks went delightfully red again, and Rayla smiled. 

Rayla tugs him back down into her lap, prepared to refuse resistance that doesn’t come…and blends the jagged edges of the clump he’d cut in with the other locks at the crown of his head.

She swipes the white streak out of his eyes.

It’s been a lot on him lately, she knows—everything with Ezran about their dad. The stolen quasar diamond…

He’d tell her if it mattered.

She definitely notices, though, the bandage that appears over his hand the next time he returns back to their suite at the Lodge less than whole.

This time, though, Callum has an answer she believes.

He’s steady when she takes his palm and unwraps the strip of linen over the heel of his hand—steady while they both look at the clean red slice.

“I was sharpening my charcoal—down in the study earlier.” he explains as she ghosts a finger over it. He breathes in a hiss when she then passes a blotted towel of alcohol across the wound…but only just under his breath. He’ll live, she decides, dabbing at the cut, assured, at least, that it doesn’t need anything more than a bandage and a kiss. “Slipped.”

She believes it, too, for a good long ten minutes. Really, why would she doubt it? Sure, her dorky mage is a little less clumsy these days…but it’s not like she hasn’t seen similar scars littered over his hands, all by that same cause.

She’d have kept believing it, too…if not for the gloves.

He’d gone for a bath, she’d been picking up his clothes, and—

Shouldn’t his glove have a gash—and blood—too? Since when did he just…randomly take them off? They’d started as an art thing, keeping charcoal off his hands, he’d said once when she’d teased him—

Rayla knows she shouldn’t coax him into another lie. She should just outright ask him, but—

“Guess you’ll have to dig out a backup pair—huh?” she wonders when he comes back from the washroom, making it seem as though she’d just then been stacking his clothes up for him, like she hadn’t looked at the gloves closely. “Shame.” she sighs, eyeing his reaction.

To his credit, he doesn’t flinch as she picks them up—doesn’t take them out of her hands or anything.

He just…waits to tell his lie, until she sets them down again.

“Yeah, I’ll, uh…get those fixed too, though.”

“I have other things to be mended, too—there’s a basket over there.”

He adds them on top of her long-tattered cloak and an old orange pajama shirt neither of them wants to part with.

They’re not there in the morning.

Smart.

He’s learning, she thinks, biting her tongue.

It’s not anger, even, that’s churning in her gut—just worry, mostly. Why lie? She already knows he and Ez have been arguing, she already knows it’s all circled back around to them saving Runaan, and she already knows that none of this would be happening if they’d just caught Claudia that night when she’d made off with the remaining diamond—why make things more complicated, now with her?

He’s not smart enough to lock a door, though, apparently.

She hadn’t even been suspicious. She’d just rapped her knuckles once against the door to his study, looking for him for bed, easing it open like she has a hundred times before—

“Hey, Callum—”

—to find Callum shirtless, a knife—her knife, swiped from the place where her armor hangs behind their door—turned on himself, pointed at his hips.

“Rayla!” he jumps, dropping the blade and showing his hands. “What, uh—”

Every single nerve freezes, locking her body tight, and she goes painfully, eerily still—like one wrong move will spell disaster. What was he—

“It’s not what it looks like!”

She doesn’t know what’s worse—the lies, the stealing, the…hurting himself—or what she fears it all means.

“And what does it look like, Callum?” She tries to keep her voice measured, calm—but it pitches toward disbelief, toward panic, toward disgust. “You, trying to gut yourself in the middle of—”

It’s then that she sees the open book on his desk, and she’s only just fast enough to bolt all the way across to the table and snatch it from in front of him.

ydobwena

For breath: scrap of a Sky creature (a lock, a feather)

For bone: nail of a nobleman (an ounce exactly)

For blood: essence of an Ocean creature (a vial full)

For body: skin of the spellcaster (an inch or so will do)