i want to shape an angel

The scent of alpine loam blooms thick in Vaelus’ nostrils. Jasmine and honeysuckle carrying through the cooling air of the Tintazi wood. Hannan must smell it too with way his lungs expand as if to taste it, the way his footsteps land with quiet reverence on the forest floor.

He reaches to move aside a stray shoot of jasmine that had falling in their path, not unlike the one he had laced around her wrist some minutes earlier. Vaelus steps into the clearing.

Lake Nahami lies nestled in the towering pines, reflecting the sounds of all the tiny kingdoms that are slowly coming to life in the evening: the drone of crickets, the pale glow of fireflies, moonblossoms spreading their silvery faces. It feels almost like walking into a home she never knew about, the soft skirts of the earth opening to welcome them. Or perhaps it feels like trying to remember an enchantment poised on the tip of her tongue.

“I feel like I’m walking through a secret,” she murmurs, unsure if she will be heard; unsure if she wants to be heard.

But his footsteps slow to a stop and when his eyes smile at hers, something aches in her chest. There are too many unspoken questions caught in how he holds her gaze, too many answers in the tears that stain his cheeks. It would be so easy to reach out, trace the warmth of his lips, map the strange wooden unfamiliarity of his body. A worship that demands, for once, nothing in return.

He is so close.

Physical contact among the sisters of Sylandri had been frequent, but clinical. They would braid one another’s hair. Bathe each other in deference to the bodies they had been gifted. Dirt scraped raw from beneath every fingernail. Skin scrubbed to an unmarred canvas of devotion. Cleansing, cold, clinical touch.

There is nothing clinical about the way Hannan shivers when Vaelus reaches a hand to his jaw. There is nothing clinical about how his tears, glistening with that same secret, slide freely over her thumb to pool in her palm.

Vaelus exhales wonder.

She is not touching a creation of Sylandri. She is not touching a body to be worshipped for its miraculous creation. No. This body belongs to a man, and his name is Hannan. 

His name is Hannan, and Hannan is real.

“Aren’t you used to this?” Vaelus asks, tiny sparks alighting in her chest at the flutter of Hannan’s lashes against her fingers, the soft padded inside of his hand moving to cradle her own. His eyes burnish with such a rich, earthen hazel, that for a moment Vaelus thinks she could be looking at the fresh fall of autumn leaves or the dull brown of moss-riddled oak. Hannan smiles.

“Used to the feeling of someone’s touch for the first time?” He says softly, voice falling to a whisper. His lips part as she traces them. His breath hot and damp with humidity. “I hope I never grow used to that.

The ache in her chest twists when his fingers trace the chains of her veil, a question. She knows what it looks like when she removes it: the tiny criss-cross indents across her cheeks and nose that take hours to fade. The veil that tells the world that the Sisters will never smile again, the veil that keeps chains on their faces.

Hannan drops his hand from the veil to gather both of hers, the Stone of Nightsong wrapped carefully inside. A wisp of a thought crosses her mind: she cannot kiss with the veil still on her face, she cannot feel the texture of his skin on her lips. How will Hannan ever know that she is smiling, right now, right here, before him, for him?

“If immortality can be given up for a child, do you think we could find a way?” Vaelus says. She isn’t sure what she is asking, isn’t sure what she means by ‘we’. Only that the question makes her head spin, and that his answering grip around her fingers is painfully close to a promise.

“I would do it in a second,” he says, dropping his forehead to hers.

“A second,” she echoes.

The forest breathes around them, the sound of muffled applause barely registering through the trees

The union of flesh had never been required to make an immortal child. It was all knees on cold stone floors and a series of prayers after a century of proving worthiness. Thinking on it now makes it seem almost silly.

Maybe she could take all the reverence she had given to a Shaper and turn it into a new worship, to the feeling of how her wrist tingles where his lips have pressed. Hannan’s body is solid before her, the lines of his collarbone alive with the movement of breath.

This body belongs to a man, his name is Hannan, and he is kin.

“You are crying,” Hannan says, eyes gentle with curiosity. He’s watching her carefully, every small thought on his own face unguarded, offered freely to her. Vaelus beats down the tightness that threatens to clamp her throat. “What is your heart saying to you, Vaelus?”

Vaelus looks down at their fingers tangling together around the Stone. A stone that she had held with such one-minded possessiveness for days, a stone she had been seeking for months for her own purpose. It is almost unbelievable that she is not snatching the Stone away to keep inside her coat. Something relaxes in Hannan when he follows her eyes downwards, and it takes her far too long to realise that is it trust he is gifting to her in this moment.

I don’t deserve this trust, Hannan. I don’t deserve your trust. Don’t relax around me. Don’t.

Then their fingers close simultaneously around the stone and the light sunders them apart.

Time blurs, slows, speeds.

Vaelus curses at the magic, hears the sounds of Azune’s voice, and feels like she is drowning under the weight of the decision she must make. What is your heart saying? How is she supposed to choose? She had never given herself permission to be anything other than a devoted paladin, let alone answer the desires of her heart.

“Do what you heart tells you.” Hannan’s voice is impossibly calm, his eyes a steady hazel even as his body is suspended by magic.

An eternity to have all of your complexity, all of your possibility, all of your dreams folded into an idyllic paradise. Everything was hers. Our immortal lives given to us, and in exchange we gave up the ability to have freedom, to make our own families and our own stories.

These had been Hannan’s words to her, earlier. The ones that had left her with a kind of disorientation from having her foundations so thoroughly shaken. Centuries of purpose, sworn oaths of adoration—all rattling around inside like a loose pebble in an empty jar.

Hannan asks again if she is okay, but she cannot answer. Not with the possibility of her sister so close to her, her family, breathing and alive in Aramán once again. She sees also, Occtis, and Julien. Thaisha.

The Stone is hot in her hands.

“I’m sorry I took so long!” She cries, unsure if she is saying it to the forest, to her family, to Hannan, to herself. But she is not speaking to Sylandri. No. Because the secret is not a secret anymore. Never had it been a secret. She had never loved Sylandri more than she had loved her sister and her family. And she had been a fool if she thought she would never love anyone else again like she did her family.

Nobody owns her love. Not Sylandri, not another person, not even the woods.

And perhaps the worst part is that, from the darkest corners of her mind, her decision still ends up being shamefully close to the flip of a coin. Her mind shudders between two alternative worlds, two entirely opposed futures. In the end it is Hannan’s face crystallising in her vision, the recent memory of the solidity of his body against hers. The first real thing in the midst of the maelstrom of magic. The first real person she has been able to see as something other than an obstacle in her path.

Her eyes squeeze close and she screams an apology into the forest, holding the imaginary body of her sister close to her chest and presses, presses, presses until she know she can press no further. I love you. Then her arms are released, and power unravels around her.

It is touch that anchors her back into the present. Two warm hands wrapped around her forearms, hazel eyes asking are you okay? And of course she is not okay, but she can see in the painful twist of Hannan’s lips, the tears not yet dry on his face, that he knows.

“You have done something so selfless, and I will promise you this,” Hannan says, breathless with a vibrant energy. “I will join your fight: the home that you have bought for them—” He points to the city, to Dol-Makjar —“We will buy for yours. And it will be done the longer and harder way, yes. But I will relish that journey with you.”

There’s a brick crushing her heart with a terrible grief, but the gratitude she feels in that moment is immense. “Thank you,” she says, too stunned to respond with anything more coherent. He understands. In this moment, she doesn’t care for being praised for her selfless decision, or to hear about all the good she has done. She just needs someone to understand what she has given up, and how lonely her decision feels. Hannan understands this. “You will—” she swallows— “go with me on this journey?”

His laughter like leaf-fall in a harmless breeze. “Did I not just say I would?”

Vaelus wants to kiss him. Or yell at the trees. Or screamed in grief. Throw her censor. Something, anything to reconcile the guilt with the relief.

So when name Mara is spoken, and his voice borders too close to accusation, the chaotic whirl of her emotions spill over. She doesn’t mean to yell at him, not really. She tells herself she had been so caught up in her single-minded journey that she hadn’t paid enough attention to the people who were alive, living, in trouble, in pain.

“I don’t know you, I mean—I’m sorry, but I don’t!” Vaelus yells to him. The words sound heartless and clunky as they leave her mouth, more so for the confusion that gathers in the corners of his eyes.

Vaelus’ minds spins.

Failure had never been allowed among the Sisters of Sylandri. It would be punished severely and the consequences frequently lasted for decades. Her body tenses with the memory of it, of all the times she had been disrespectful. And so she is afraid to look back at him. To see the promise he had started to give her snatched away before it could take its first step.

I should’ve told him—what was I thinking—I should’ve told him.

Since when has hope ever needed more than half a seed of her own stupid mouth to dash itself into oblivion?

And yet.

Hannan stands firm in a bed of lightning, the air crackling around him, his hair a wild flame in the wind. These is still confusion in his eyes, impatience, a touch of lonely anger—but his body remains open to her. A steady horizon she could tread towards. There will be no punishment. There will be no consequences. His response is so practical and measured that Vaelus relaxes all at once.

“Do you want me to go with you?” She asks, stupidly. There is no reason he would want her to follow him, especially now, with her clunky mouth. No reason.

Hannan studies her for a beat too long. “Once again you will make a choice,” he says, firm. “Go where you heart tells you.”

Her throat is dry and thick, her breath shallow. Dolls are not suppose to have senses, but her heart might just burst through her ribs. Dolls are not suppose to feel, but she has to wipe the tears from her cheeks again. Hannan’s face softens.

“Be safe,” she manages, tearing her eyes away from him to the direction of the theatre through the woods. She has already committed to helping Thaisha. This is where trust begins, doesn’t it? With commitment to someone because of a promise, not because of worship. And there is no reason he would want her to follow him.

He nods once. There’s something there, a small hesitation that briefly touches his brow, before he disappears in a flash of lightning.

It takes a long time to remember to breathe again.

Gradually the forest settles down until the crickets are loud enough to compete with her thoughts. Vaelus clamps down on the uncertainty that threatens to crawl out of her throat.

She will change. This much she promises to herself as she follows Azune back. She will learn how to accept trust that is solely given to her, and not given to a dead Shaper. Learn how to give trust to someone who follows their heart, and not their prayer.