#lucrowe

Lestallum hummed in mute whorls of industrious insomnia around them. Despite the perpetual warmth of the town’s meteoric core, pulsing in steady dregs of power beneath her feet, Crowe felt strangely cold beside Lunafreya. It wasn’t the first time. In the small span of time she’d known the princess, she’d felt a chill in her presence that Crowe could never quite define. It wasn’t exactly dread, not a fearful sort of cold that begged her to escape some frigid danger yet undiscovered beneath the placid grin of the Princess.

It was quite the opposite, actually. The kind of chill she felt around Luna was more of a relief. It was a balm to the heat that had seethed in Crowe’s veins since she was old enough to recognize rage. It was the kind of cold that one welcomed, if only for the promise that there would be warmth at the end of it. Crowe ran hot, but she’d rarely ever felt warmth. Her heat was fury, wild and volcanic erupting from deep within her resentment for the Empire.

Warmth, however – true warmth – was a feeling of comfort, soft and safe in the weary aftermath of the fighting. It was the long thaw of the extremes which numbed Crowe all her life. And there was a kind of terror to letting herself feel that. Every time she looked into Luna’s eyes and felt that gentle wash of wintry ease start to snuff the flames in her, she felt afraid. Afraid of the warmth she knew was coming afterward, afraid to feel the safety she knew that the Oracle would promise once she escaped her self-made inferno.

Lunafreya terrified her. And Crowe was certain she knew it.

“Where have you been?” Luna asked, with all the patience of a snowfall, the whisper of her voice as light upon Crowe’s ears as the winter flurries.

“Around,” Crowe said, wrinkling her nose as she kicked a chunk of dirt from the sole of her shoe – she didn’t even remember where she’d walked for them to get so dirty. “Easy to get lost in this place.”

“I understand.”

Crowe glanced over, unnerved by her deep blue stare, as motionless as a still pool of water, awaiting the first ripples to stir the surface. She hoped that she didn’t expect Crowe to be the one to dip her toe in. Because when she fell into Luna’s gaze, she made a splash, made waves cresting chaos in the quietude. That was all she’d ever done – create chaos.

“If you ever need help finding your way…”

“I can figure it out on my own.”

While Luna did not frown or flinch or flick away her gaze, Crowe felt guilty for being dismissive of her anyway. It was a reflex, to snap first and regret it later. But Luna took it with just as much grace as she took her morning cup of tea: with a touch of sweetness and a careful hand.

“Nevertheless,” she said, frosting over the hot lash of Crowe’s frustration. “Rest awhile. Enjoy the moonlight with me.”

Crowe huffed, but otherwise obliged the princess. Her boots were heavy with drying dirt and she could feel the fatigue in her soul. It had been a long night. Been a longer walk to get here. She might never understand what Luna could see in the banalities of the world which Crowe could not, but she’d take the excuse to just sit, be still, and listen to her talk.

“Everyone in the world is so frightened of the dark,” Luna murmured. “So few people see it for the stars anymore. I confess that sometimes I forget myself.”

“It’s a scary place,” Crowe agreed. “Hard to look up to see what’s there, when the second you take your eyes off the road a daemon’s bound to appear.”

“I suppose that’s true.”

Crowe squinted up at the face of the moon, trying to decipher the theater of shadows Luna claimed to see in every moonrise. It had always been difficult for Crowe to see the beauty in simple things. Watching a magitek soldier melt down into black embers at the snap of her fingers as fire wreathed around its core; now that was a thing of beauty. Destruction was beautiful to her, because while it was fleeting, it still left its mark. That’s all she ever wanted – to leave her mark.

When she looked back at Luna, she wasn’t looking at the moon. She’d never taken her steady gaze off of Crowe, full of that faraway fondness that Crowe didn’t know how to bring closer.

“Not watching your moon?” Crowe jabbed, gently as she could manage with her barbed tongue.

“We have such little time. I’d much rather spend it seeing you.”

“I’m here all night,” Crowe chuckled, bemused.

But then she saw what Luna meant about shadows across the moon. She could see how the light shifted across the woman’s face, how her smile remained the same yet the shade of it all changed. The chill she recognized as a comfort from Lunafreya turned sharply to the one she remembered as dread. Crowe looked down at her boots again, at the dark brown dirt caked between the laces. Her feet felt so heavy with it, weighing her down, down, down even further.

“Ah,” Crowe said, matter-of-factly. “Right. Forgot.”

“Forgive me.”

“For what?” Crowe grunted, dragging herself to her feet.

“For keeping you here,” Luna said, quietly, afraid that the whole world might hear her. “For not insisting you let me help you.”

“Couldn’t stop me in life, princess. Definitely can’t stop me now.”

The solemnity in Luna’s smile made Crowe yearn to remain, but remembering always kept her moving. She had to return the grave dust on her boots, start again from where she’d ended. She’d find her way back here again, though. Somehow, she always found her way back to Luna.

She vanished too quickly for Luna to say goodbye. Much like how she died, it happened too fast for her to say everything she wanted before it was over. She’d loved her too briefly, and lost her too quickly. And while she knew how selfish it was to keep her tethered like this, Luna couldn’t seem to bring herself to let go. What did it matter? They both had so little time. Was it so wrong of her to cherish these nightly visitations while she still could?

She knew what was coming. It had already begun, deep in her chest, just below her heart. It scraped up into her throat, coughing past her lips in faint black flecks. Luna took a deep breath, driving the darkness back down, and turning her eyes back to the moon. Watching the dark and the light orbit each other across the surface, never quite touching, yet never quite apart, she made a promise.