#pigs.

On the list of things Shiori says without knowing she’ll regret it in matter of minutes, there’s one in particular that is most catastrophic:

“You can sing?”

G’raha fidgets in that particular way he always does when he’s flustered, rubbing his forearm and averting her eyes. “I—A little, yes,” he confesses. “Though I only really know the songs my father taught me—”

“Sing for me!” she blurts out with the excitement of a child in Starlight morning, half fascinated and half disbelieving. G’raha Tia, a singer. “Please,” she adds, belatedly realizing she’s kind of leaning into his personal space.

G’raha goes a little pink in the cheeks at that, which honestly just makes her want to push his buttons even more. “I don’t know,” he mumbles.

“Please, G’raha?” she pleads. “I really want to hear it.”

Pink becomes fuschia. Shiori is so alive.

But G’raha stays silent, and she doesn’t actually want to make the boy uncomfortable, as amusing as it is to be the one doing the teasing for once. She speaks again. “If you really don’t want to, it’s f—”

“No, I—” he mutters, “it’s fine. Just don’t stare, all right?”

Shiori nods emphatically, settling back down and waiting. G’raha takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, and begins to sing.

It’s a beautiful song, the one he chooses.

His voice under the dim light of the sunset over Mor Dhona is impossibly lovely. It starts quiet and shaky, but in a minute it grows soft and tentative, each note like a drop of light. They rise and fall and hang in the air around them, the cool wind feeling even chillier against their warmth. His only accompaniment is the rustling of the leaves and the sway of the flowing waters of Lake Silvertear—there’s Shiori’s heartbeat too, but its rhythm is going a little too fast for such a slow, lovely song.

She wants to look away but finds herself unable to. G’raha sings and she forces herself to watch and watch until the last note fades away and G’raha opens his eyes, cyan and crimson meeting silver.

“There you have it,” he says, voice quiet and unusually shy.

Shiori swallows. “That was a lovely song,” she says, glad her voice doesn’t reflect the rapid, staccato rhythm of her heartbeat. “You—have a nice voice.”

“Thanks,” he mutters, lips curling around a smile. He blinks, and something that feels like danger flashes through his eyes for a moment. “Now that you mention it,” he says, smile slowly turning into a smirk she’s very familiar with, “you mentioned before that you used to sing with your mother, didn’t you?”

Oh, hells.

“Sometimes, yes—”

“So you can sing, then?” he leans in, close, far too close— “Will you sing for me?”

Any resemblance of composure that still remained in her slips through her fingers. “When pigs fly, maybe,” she blurts. “I’m not—I’m not like you. My mother was the good singer, I could barely pass as an amateur.”

“Not fair,” G’raha pouts. “I sang for you.”

“Well I told you you didn’t have to!”

G’raha whines some more, but she doesn’t give in. He eventually lets it go, and they walk back to camp in silence, Shiori escaping into her tent and crawling into her makeshift bed at the first opportunity she gets. She thinks of G’raha, of his voice under the sunset and his song upon the wind, and she does not sleep.

“You know,” Raha ponders, head on her lap, the streak of crystal on his cheek glowing under the moonlight, “there’s one thing that you said to me, back in the time when we first met.”

“I said a lot of things to you back then,” Shiori says, running her fingers through his hair lazily. “Granted, most of them were a variation of ‘you’re an insufferable pest, G’raha Tia’, but still.”

He laughs. Gods, how she has missed that sound. “True, but what I’m thinking about wasn’t one of those. ‘Twas something you said on the day I sang for you.”

Oh. Oh, no.

“Raha—”

“I asked,” he cuts her off, “if you’d sing for me. And you said you would— when pigs fly.” His smile is familiar. Twenty-four years old, brash and mischievous, teasing her at every opportunity— “Tell me, love. What did you see when you visited Il Mheg?”

Shiori closes her eyes. May her death be swift. “Flying pigs,” she answers, resigned.

“Hmm,” he hums, impossibly self-satisfied. She heroically resists the urge to deck him. “Well?”

She sighs. “Fine. But most of the songs I know are in Hingan.”

“Anything is fine as long as I get to hear your voice.”

“Mushy.”

“So you say. You’re blushing, Warrior of Darkness.”

“Be quiet, will you,” she says without any bite, lets her eyes fall closed while he chuckles at her little outburst. She breathes, buries the embarrassment somewhere she can’t think about it, and starts singing.

It’s not a particularly romantic song, but it is one that her mother used to sing for her, and the fond memories she has of it overwhelm the shyness she feels over singing to someone—even if that someone happens to be Raha. She doesn’t go through the whole song, instead letting her voice fade after the first couple minutes of it.

“There,” she says, quietly, “I told you it wasn’t—”

She’s cut off by a familiar pair of lips over hers, swallowing her words and the small, surprised gasp that escapes from her throat. He pulls her down with a hand on the nape of her neck and leans up to meet her halfway, kisses her until she’s breathless.

“Okay,” she gasps, weakly, when they part.

Raha laughs. “My apologies,” he says, settling back down on her lap. “I just can’t believe I lived—survived—a hundred years without hearing that.”

Shiori fidgets. “It’s nothing special, Raha.”

“Your uncanny ability to sell yourself short is as impressive as it is infuriating,” he sighs, but smiles soon after. “Will you sing again? Please.”

She reaches down to touch his hair, twirling a lock around her finger. Soft. “You’re spoiled, you know,” she chides, but closes her eyes and lets herself sing one more time.