[SE] sky full of song

Amalia I took the stars from my eyes, I made a map A grin splits her face at his promise of fairness, tawny eyebrows arching high in delicate surprise. "Then I am still winning!" Amalia attests, delighted, unaccustomed to being the victor in such affairs. Her voice is a challenge, a teasing, taunting dare. Catch up! it coaxes, unspoken words in the lilting notes, the glitter of her eyes, the beat of her breath. Catch me, if you can! Her next command is met with compliance- another pleasant surprise. His hands are guards upon her waist, anchors to the world and harbingers of the sky. She springs, and he catches, wrapping around her narrow middle and bringing her to new heights. For a moment all else is forgotten: there is only the sun on her neck, her hands on her waist, the notes of their laughter bleeding together as the girl so moored to the past takes flight, anxieties left to wither and decay. Then she is back upon the earth again, the grass beneath her toes and a rosy bloom on her cheeks. Her victims sputter their indignation, spinning and stalking, deprived of their crowns, and Deimos chides her for her indiscretion, his scolding voice steel in their aureate game. Prone so easily to recoil, Amalia falters a moment, abashed, a glimmer of doubt shading her face, her smile dimming beneath the taunt, eyes retreating to the ground. There are rules, it seems, which have gone unspoken, lines she has crossed and errors she has made. She has failed, fallen, ruined the fun, crashed upon the dangerous rocks which lurk below the surface of their sea. She was a fool to think she could fly, she who wears the weight of the world, she who aches beneath past sins... No. The girl bites her lip, raising her eyes again to his, a hopeful prayer underlying the doubt. Is that humor in his eyes, the remnants of a smile at the edge of his lips? Is chiding truly mockery, consternation in jest? She wants it to be, wills it to be, needs it to be-- Do you really think so little of others, to believe they'd waste their time on someone they despise? And so instead of running away from him, Amalia invites him to run alongside, praying he will not leave her behind-- And when he releases her hand she feels cold, not surprised but resigned, accepting, hopeless and hapless, refusing to stall in her flight away from her errors, her sins. Of course she has failed, of course he is done, of course he will leave her to her own devices, her feet in the cold grass, a ship without a guiding star-- And then she is off the ground, strong arms wrapping around her waist and flinging her up and around, over his shoulder, back to the sky. "Eeeep!" Amalia exclaims her protest as her vision flips and she is suddenly behind him, sort of, facing the bewildered expressions of her victims as her stalwart steed barrels through the crowd. Too shocked to protest, the girl only laughs, plucking another crown from a stranger as they make their way through the bemused onlookers, afloat once again in the shelter of his embrace, her woeful fears and plaguing uncertainty abandoned upon the ground. And I knew that somehow I could find my way back