AMALIA
THE SHIELD OF SAFRIN
i think it's beautiful how a star's light
He lifts his chin off of her head, and the girl resists the urge to spin around, press her face against his chest and close herself off from a tumultuous world. It would be nice to take shelter in his arms, ignore the failings and falling and trials of a world that has never forgiven them for their arrogance, never rewarded the mischief of youth with anything but loss. Yes, she defied, and yes, she climbed, and in the end what did she gain? A fear of drowning, a broken arm, her mother's anger, a hundred tears. She climbed many things in the lapsing days after, but she never again took on that tree.travels the universe long after it dies
Wiser, perhaps, for her fear, but oh, at what cost, at what cost?
These are the parts of the tales they do not tell: the dark edges on a silver cloud, the painful failings, the things that have gone wrong.
Sometimes it feels like it is hard to find any silver lining. But then she remembers him.
He follows her tale with a quiet question, and she knows what it means even if he doesn't say it, the thing that he actually asks. "Hmm," comes her thoughtful exhalation, eyes on the water as she raises his fingers to press against he lips, musings punctuated by the pads of his digits as she kisses them softly, one at a time. What is it like? Like dreaming. Like singing. Like standing on the top of the tallest tree and knowing that the world is beneath, wide and waiting for her to live.
"It's like swimming, I imagine, but you can still breathe, and there are no limits except the sky." Arms raise up to paint the picture of it, fingers stretching toward the clouds, wistful and entranced. "It's like freedom," - a novel concept, still, to the girl born in a dome.
Letting her arms drop, Amalia pulls away from him, his hands still in hers as she spins to face him, smiling and falling into the blue, the endless expanse of his glittering gaze. "If you were Attuned I could take you flying," she says, tilting her head, her lips upcurled wistfully, arms extended as she dances lightly away, never breaking her hold on his hands. "And you could show me the sea."
That's what I want to be in this world —
someone whose light lingers after I'm gone
