they say that love is forever, your forever is all i need
please stay as long as you need
She had definitely made a lantern this year. Now that she knew what the festival was about, what it signified. It had also marked an entire year of her arrival, and with it, the pain of remembering everything that had happened – those that had come and gone, seen and unseen, gone to return again. But she knew one thing for certain, she had changed in more ways than one and had decided with it to move forward, to leave the past in the past (minus one thing). And so she had worked hard with some of the paints left over from Bastien’s set, while he was away, silent and quiet to herself, remembering her favorite things in that cell in the dungeon (what little things she could find to be favorited), and she had used it for inspiration. The way the sun lightly peeked through the tiny flares in stone, leaving beautiful rays of sunlight that streaked across the bars. And so she had created a little, small lantern, adorned in golds and blacks, a trail of dark feathers dipped in gold and bronze that she had gathered, that swung from the base of the lantern.
Then, the Penumbra, with a heavy heart and open mind, slipped into the Festival. But she had found Bastien first, beelining toward him with a soft smile on her face. She reaches him, lifting up to press a kiss to his cheek before she looks to the lantern with a somewhat raised brow, setting hers in on hand while she inspected the hues and colors, about to open her mouth and make some sort of comment about last Longnight, before she paused and he told her.
“For your child, the one you told me of before.” She hears, and her eyes immediately snap up to meet his, a fluid filled tears begin to brim in her eyes, her heart already heavy before but she had never exactly expected this between all the preparation she had planned. She uses her free hand to grab onto his arm and pull him into a kiss before looking back down to inspect the lantern. “It’s beautiful, Bastien.” She says, biting onto her lip to keep the tears from falling, but when she looks up to his face she finds all the care and love she needs within him. “Do you want to hang them together?” She asks, breaking away briefly to wipe at her eyes with a slightly shaking hand, before giving him a small smile.
Should he go with her, she makes her way to the edge where an opening lies, and she looks to the others around it before angling her head slightly toward Bastien, to tell him, to inform him of a name that had only touched her tongue once. “His name was Tiberius…” She trails off, explaining quietly and withdrawn, reaching up to hang her lantern and watch the feathers blow in the wind, arms wrapping around herself as she does so.
REXANNA
