Cas' Memories

Alone again. But not quite as cold as when she set out. Vela shoots her a lingering glance, Kadoren’s eyes heavy and Slate already half-asleep, but they leave her as she asks. There’s one more thing she has to do.

And she isn’t ready to let go. There’s not much time left, and when she wakes up tomorrow, he’ll be gone.

Even as their footsteps fade and their forms disappear into the darkened streets, she still feels on edge. But no one is around; only the wind and the waves whisper softly on the shore.

Nerve fails her. Where to start. Where to end. There’s just so much, too much for one person to bear.

As she slumps onto the wooden docks, prepared to give up even trying, it’s Vela that springs to her mind. Vela with her eyes shut and her head lifted to the radiant moons’ glow, terror trembling in her voice for but a moment before it steadies, as calm as the gentle waves.

Tears prick her eyes, a rush of emotion unbidden. Brave enough to try even when she’s scared. Brave enough that she can too.

“Hey, Cephi.” She stutters, chokes on his name, but she swallows the lump in her throat. Manages a smile, though it hurts. “It’s been a while.”

Finally the words flow. She tells him everything. Everything she’s been trying to say but couldn’t. Every wrong and every pain and all the little pinpricks of hope shining through, those tiny reasons to live that she couldn’t before have admitted to. And how terrified she really is, and how much she just wants everything to be okay again.

And when she’s almost out of words, the moons have nearly risen to their crest in the sky though she’s heedless of the passing of time.

“I don’t know what will happen when this is over,” she murmurs. Her mind wanders to something like a promise, one of those hopeful stars she’s found herself wishing on. “But I…”

“Cas?”

The tentative voice startles her almost to her feet, but she finds only Vela stepping into the flickering lanternlight. For a moment she’s relieved, and then she remembers what she was just doing and finds a warmth quite different creeping up her face.

Vela looks about as embarrassed as her, which takes the edge off somewhat. “Sorry, I… It’s late. I was worried about you.” She looks away, shifting self-consciously. “We should head back.”

She hesitates, finally letting herself drop back down to the ground. “I… don’t know if I’m ready.”

Before she can suggest that Vela head back alone, though she’s clearly torn about it, the kirin takes a tentative step forward. In the center of the light, her features are awash in soft blue glow. “Mind if I sit here?”

“Um…” Not what she was expecting, but… Well, why not.

Vela settles down not far away, a hoof briefly brushing the moonglades on the black waves below before quickly retracting. It’s night as much as it was a few hours ago, but it still feels colder. They sit in less than comfortable quiet, Cas wondering just how much she heard, and Vela’s sheepish silence not making it much easier…

Before she knows it, she’s blurting out something just to stop it from stretching on any longer. “Your ballad, um, it – it helped me.”

Vela pauses, and she finds her averted gaze drawn to her wide-eyed expression. Either at what she’d said or the fact that she’d even said it. “It did?”

She stutters out an explanation about how much she’d been struggling to talk to her brother, how seeing her do something like that had inspired some sort of courage of her own. By the time she’s finished she still can’t bring herself to look at her, but the silence has softened somewhat.

They talk in hushed voices, and the familiar comfort of her presence, the warmth still hovering over her, the still night and the sky alive with breathing colours and twisting fragments of the universe, it coaxes something out of her she’d never let see the dawn.

Something she’d never told anyone. Didn’t have to with Slate. Didn’t want to with anyone else. Something she wasn’t even sure how to talk about so long after he was gone.

And yet in Vela’s patient expression, the eyes reflecting her own shadows… She wants to sink into them. She wants her to know, to share their ghosts, to take their pain.

Warm memories drift over her, nostalgic already though they’re not long past. Lit with dreamy, fiery light from below as they drift in circles, the open vulnerability in her expression that she couldn’t pull her eyes from. Secrets whispered, for a tiny beautiful moment, just between them. No one else.

It’s her turn. She’s run long enough.

So she lets it all overflow. A brief glimmer of kindness before disaster. All the terrible things that came after. Her anger, her fear. Grief for her brother she could not help. Grief for herself she could not save.

And what she’d needed all along, what she hadn’t let herself have. People who’d care. People who’d stay.

“I was afraid,” she admits, her voice misting the stars. “I didn’t want him to see what I’d become. And even after this, after Abisis, and…”

She trails off, Vela following her gaze to the heavens. The stars burst with the approach of midnight, even more unknown galaxies blooming in the sky. His presence is so strong she feels she could reach out and touch him.

“Your brother would be proud of you,” Vela murmurs. In all this talk and in the brief stolen brushes between whispers they’d somehow shifted closer together. “You’re saving the world. You have… friends.” Her voice skips on that. “I... hope my family is proud of me too.”

Her voice breaks slightly, her head still turned skyward. Cas glances at her, hesitating before leaning in and briefly brushing against her. Even with that small initiation she has to quickly pull away. “They would be.”

She hopes she’s right about Cephi. She hopes he knows she’s still trying.