--

"Do you think it'll actually make it there?"

Rumi can't imagine that it'll get very far.

But the lantern floats on anyway—the small candle at the bottom burning bright enough to make the thin paper walls glow. It's the only other thing that's warm around her—though not as warm as Celine's hand that covers her smaller one.

"It will," Celine replies. She watches quietly as it keeps floating upwards.

Rumi is startled that it keeps going—at how quickly it's climbing—until the flickering orange glow is just an ever-shrinking pinprick.

"It carries our wishes," Celine continues. "Or prayers. Or love, or hope, or luck."

"To where?"

When the light vanishes, Rumi can't tell if it's because it's because it's made it there—to that impossibly distant place—or if it's because the fire had gone out. There's a tightness that coils in her chest, a light and fleeting panic, a sudden rush where she desperately hopes it's the former.

She looks up at Celine—who is looking up at the stars with a longing in her eyes that makes Rumi wonder what she's wishing for.

Celine gives her hand a light squeeze.

"To anywhere it needs to go."

--

She doesn't know them very well yet.

Meeting Zoey and Mira for the first time was a little underwhelming—especially considering what she's read in her studies.

The historical accounts of previous hunters all used such nebulous, impassioned words: soulmates, or three parts of a whole, or the people you are destined to be with. Even Celine, normally so curt, had spoken about the hunters—hers, she'd always say—with a lingering sense of warmth, or just an ache.

What was that supposed to feel like? There was so much build up and anticipation she'd almost expected fireworks beneath her skin when the day finally came to meet them—but there weren't any. Just two handshakes and a giggle.

But today—a month or so later, a sunny afternoon—she finds them in her little corner of the garden. Mira has dirt up to her elbows and Zoey looks to be befriending an earthworm or two.

"You were sick this morning," Zoey explains when Rumi walks up to them and asks what they're doing.

Mira—who had been gently pulling the weeds around Rumi's newly-blooming tulips—just continues what she's doing, red in the ears.

"We thought you wouldn't be able to tend your flowers today, and you seem to love them a whole lot, so." Zoey just grins, and shrugs. Easy.

Easy.

Rumi's chest feels very warm all of a sudden. Warm and a bit heavy, but not unpleasant.

It isn't fireworks quite yet—but her hands itch as they hang like bricks at her sides.

Like she wants to reach out to them, maybe.

--

Rumi steps out of the building and into the rain, huddling into herself as she waits beneath a small overhang for their chauffer to come around the front.

The door slides open again behind her.

"Unnie."

She isn't alone—and it's a frightful thing, how much better that makes her feel. And how quickly. She knows the voice well by now, is slowly learning its undertones of softness.

"Mira?"

She's still in the hoodie and sweats from after her own shoot. It had ended an hour and a half earlier than Rumi's—she should be home by now. Instead she's here, holding a book, looking a little sleepy.

"What are you still doing here?"

Mira's standing closer now. There's a little pause, then: "I didn't want you to go home alone."

The wind and rain pick up, and Rumi steps in closer towards Mira—instinct—shielding her from the spray and sudden mist. She hears Mira huff out a little laugh, but they both say nothing about it.

When the backs of their hands brush against each other and their knuckles graze, she feels the way Mira's hand uncurls, the slight movement of her tendons, like she might hook their fingers together.

And Rumi waits for it—and she can tell that maybe Mira is waiting too.

And they wait and they wait and they wait—but Rumi can't quite decipher what it is she's meant to do, is a little afraid of the coiling urgency in her chest, the heaviness of it.

Instead, she just turns to look up at Mira. She's still beautiful even when the sky is dull and washed out with gray.

Rumi is good at this part—at staring from a distance.

No one moves. Rumi finds herself feeling disappointed, but what's new? Nothing has ever been hers to just—take.

It's a kindness when things are unreachable—'just a little further' is something far crueler than an impossible distance.

--

"Any luck?" Rumi hums, perfectly content, her eyes closed and her hands folded over her stomach as she sinks into the plush cushions of their ridiculous couch.

Zoey's on her lap, straddling her.

She's wearing fluffy pajamas and running her calloused fingers along Rumi's silken hair. It's undone today, fanning out over her shoulders and the backrest of the sofa, a million-mile-long curtain of purple.

Zoey's apparently searching for the first sign of white—something about it being endlessly amusing that Mira's grays are popping up at twenty-one, and surely Rumi has one or two by now as well.

Rumi opens her eyes—and then her lips part in a small, quiet gasp.

The afternoon sun hits Zoey's face perfectly. Her brows are a little furrowed, her bottom lip caught in her teeth as she pours every bit of her attention into finding Rumi's elusive white hairs.

"None yet," Zoey huffs—but she's undeterred.

Rumi grips her own hands til her knuckles turn white. She wills them to stay still. Zoey is warm where her knees gently rest against Rumi's sides—is warm everywhere, like the sun loves her the most. Her smile is softer for it, her brown eyes glowing into something lighter.

"Maybe I'll try again in a year," Zoey leans back, seemingly resigned, her mouth curled into a silly smile.

And Rumi wants to—

Oh, no.

She wants.

She had never allowed herself that luxury before. And Rumi almost gives in, too, until Zoey braces herself against her arm to get up and the only thing between her hand and a sickly, purple pattern is the thin fabric of her sweater. It almost makes her sick to her stomach—guilt and shame and longing curdling up together into something she doesn't recognize anymore.

Zoey's standing up now—and soon she's faraway again.

--

Of course she loves them.

She doesn't have to have them to love them. If she puts her hands to work—unclasped and giving instead—maybe they will unlearn the vicious urge to grasp and be so greedy.

She brushes Zoey's hair ('I love you'),

And cooks Mira her favorite soup ('I love you'),

And sits by their bedside when they fall sick and frail and feverish ('Please be okay—I love you'),

And keeps an arm around them when they walk through a crowd ('I love you—so deeply'),

And tucks them in as they sleep ('I am falling apart—and I love you'),

And—she's cooking them breakfast now.

It sizzles on the pan while they lean on each other on their couch, half-awake, some silly talkshow playing on their giant TV as the morning settles. Zoey likes runny eggs, Mira prefers hers over-medium. She salts one, but not the other. Chops up some parsley to set to the side.

I love you. I love you. I love you.

She looks up from the chopping board and she catches the moment that Mira presses a kiss onto the crown of Zoey's head.

Rumi nearly drops the knife—and it might as well have lodged itself between her ribs—a sharp and blooming ache grows in her chest, because, there it is—she gets it now.

All the books and the records and the tender ache in Celine's voice every time she had mentioned the previous hunters—the ones who were hers.

Soulmates. Three parts of a whole. The people you are destined to be with.

The fireworks hit with a sting instead of a wonderous crackle—deep within her skin, still, but ringing so thunderously that she wants to cry—she nearly does, almost burns the second set of eggs when her eyes begin to sting, stumbling in the kitchen while the rest of her life sits in the living room none the wiser.

Do you they feel it? That she loves them? That she loves them so much? In every thing she's ever done—these little lanterns of her soul, carrying the wishes of her heart—candles that float upward to the night sky she isn't allowed to reach for—with her love, with her longing.

She's still wishing, just like when she was a child, that they'll make it there.

But today it feels like they've been caught in the cavern of her chest, stuck at the top where they can't float away, until the paper catches fire and she's burning up inside, and it aches and it aches and her ribs are so tired, and—

"I love you."

--

It takes losing them for her to realize that she's been such a fool.

She's reaching out now, to someplace even further away than the night sky—past the moon, past the sun, past that impossible distance—to pull them back, to take them home.

They hear her as she serenades them through the crowd and the towering flames. It's the same song it's always been—I love you—and they start singing back.

They start singing back.

Or have they been singing back the whole time already? Since the beginning—since all they had were two handshakes and a giggle between them?

They crash into each other's arms and the Honmoon flickers into something entirely new—it's made of a million pinpricks of light floating in the sky: made up of their patience, and their longing, and their own little whispers of love—answering all her wayward wishes, returned back a thousand times over, built up over years and years.

And she's been such a fool—but that's okay.

She's theirs now.

--

Rumi kisses Zoey softly along her temple, her cheek, her brow. She lifts up Mira's arm from where it's draped across her middle, presses a kiss to her knuckle and lingers a little as their fingers thread together.

The thing about her stars is that they are beautiful curled up beside her—cradled in her arms, tucked beneath her chin, pressed against her back as she settles in between them.

-

end

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A/N: