I've Lost the Moon:
Silver caressed his face, the soft threads of moonlight playing off his iridescent scales and glassy eyes. A talon brushed against his cheek, his trembling claws tapping gently his scarred brows. Sparkles of pain flared when his claws felt gently his scalded eyes, clicks arising from the eyelid's scales at every prod. Sighing, his weary body resumed a four-legged stance, his head sticking out the library window. The light was felt rather than seen… maybe it was due to being hatched so near to three full moons, though he didn't know. Starflight just seemed to be attracted to the low hanging orbs, crafting the three waning spheres scattered across the night sky. He knew their positions by heart, even if only through careful study and the tingles of light dancing like electricity along his body.
The russells of forest pines added concreteness to the surrounding serenity. He felt every little thrum of his heart, could trace the paths of heat-carrying blood through his body, and even hear the flows of plasma in his arteries. Sensory deprivation did this to him. Life stepped upon his muzzle, pressing him too far down to ever fully climb from the crater. A bead of something wet, a natural prism against the moonlight, sparkled while sliding down his cheek.
Starflight shook his head, looking up to the Moon.
Again, like the night before that, and if Starflight remembered correctly—which he always did—like the night before that one, the crescents in the sky bathed the world in a kindred kind of light. But he couldn't see it, as always.
The tear forced itself out too early this time. Starflight shook his head, letting the droplet splatter against the far wall as it was flung from his scales. It was too early, he still had time before the pools of sleep would consume him. If he could push off the impending sadness a little bit longer…
Then he might just make it in time to have another night without facing the looming melancholy in his heart. The thrum of it still reverberated through his ears, as did the moonlight along his scales.
His lifeless irises, white as the moons in the sky, turned upward.
"Starflight?"
He turned his head upward, his heart raising slightly in tempo. He plastered a practiced smile across his muzzle.
"Yes?" came his ghostly whisper.
"I was wondering whether—actually, Starflight… are you okay? You seem… unanimated, I guess." He straightened his back slightly, willing his limbs upward from their resting position behind his pinewood desk. His claws idly traced over old, jagged cuts imprinted deep in the surface. The holes fit perfectly around his talons.
He told his friends that Icicle had made them in their little brawl… none thought much of it, not even mentioning how serrated claws could never result in such a smooth cut.
"I'm fine," he lied, a painfully cheerful smile contorting his muzzle, shielding from sight the invisible throbs of hurt and year old sediment of tears.
Fatespeaker hummed with doubt, the vibrations of her larynx synchronous with his heart's palpitations. Starflight could feel her skeptically eying his rigid posture. "Okay," she sighed, setting a talon on his shoulder, which he jumped at slightly. "Just tell me if anything is, Starflight." Her claws dropped unenthusiastically, sliding off his scales. "Do you know where the Index of Ancient Nightwing Culture is?"
"In the 300's." His brow furrowed. "Don't you already know that?"
"Yeah… yeah I think I do." He listened as Fatespeaker shuffled away slowly, her tail drooping along the ground as if dead weight. His ears prickled as he heard a hushed muttering, then dropped, a spike of shame pricking his heart.
"But maybe I just wanted to talk…"
The pale orbs met his own.
There was a woeful, desolate quality to the great hanging spheres. He remembered them quite vividly, his original sighting from the barren towers of the Skywing Queen, Scarlet. So many hopes had been crushed that night, tethered like the livestock he was above the arena, useless to save his friends. An odd twinge pulled at his heart, and he winced. Useless…
Is that all he is?
His claws traced the gashes in the wood, now deeper than the morning before. "Are you sure that it's nothing?" Fatespeaker's voice sounded off to his right, though his ears felt clogged with viscous fluid, the voice reaching him blurred and hollow.
"Of course," he automatically responded. His eyes stared somewhere off into the distance; his ears were dead other than the occasional flick for a better range of hearing. All the while, his claws dug deeper and deeper into the pine desk.
It came to an abrupt end as Fatespeaker's talons laid on his. Her claws stroked the scales along his forearm. Something kept Starflight from flinching away. "I care about you… you're my friend, Starflight. I—" she gulped deeply "—I hope I'll earn enough of your trust for you to tell me whatever it is that's going on."
She breathed deeply. Starflight heard the droop of her eyelids and drawn out exhale. "I'm—I'm going now." Fatespeaker turned, a rattle of her vertebrae making it clear to him that she did, in fact, look back over her shoulder at him. A moment of silence, and his heart plummeted at the dejected frown he knew was etched in her muzzle. "Good night, Starflight."
He kept telling himself that it was a good night, but the void surrounding his feeble soul echoed disagreement. Starflight couldn't bring himself to believe such a lie. The moons, pressing on his eyelids, tantalizing him with their alluring beauty, which he'd never see—it was just too much.
Breaths became shallow, panicked as despair washed the air from his lungs. It was what obscured the gentle taps of talons across the wooden boards. The slither of a midnight tail, leading into the body of Fatespeaker.
It all became apparent as he turned around, in reaction to her shocked gasp at his pained respiration. She pressed forward, nearing Starflight who pressed himself against the window, away from her. Starflight heard Fatespeaker's breath hitch and the trembling of her jaw.
"You're… you're scared of me?" she whispered, words nearly lost in even the light breeze. Starflight's eyelids clenched; his own breath went ragged. He shifted his scarred eyes to Fatespeaker, casting his blindsight on her.
He shook his own head, looking back to the moon.
"Go away," he whispered. "You shouldn't be here."
"Does it change anything if I want to be?"
Starflight flicked his moons to rest upon her, for just a moment. "No… it doesn't." He crawled through the window, lazily spreading his wings and gliding away, Fatespeaker's teary eyes to his back.
"You're back." It was a low murmur in the wind. He barely heard it behind his own heartbeat, turned doleful in the moons' wake.
"Starflight, just… please… I want to help." Rustling wings tipped him off to how Fatespeaker sidled near. He outstretched his wing slightly, to only snap it back close to his body once his mind caught up to his actions.
"Please leave, Fatespeaker. You shouldn't have to carry this burden." New divots formed in the wood under his talons. His scales gleamed with reflected light. His eyes stared at the moons, transfixed.
"But… you shouldn't have to either." She stuttered, reaching toward him with outstretched talons. He slid away. Her response was met also with a deep, resounding sigh from Starflight. His eyes dropped from the celestial bodies to the chipped wood paneling he stood upon. They fluttered unconsciously in their sockets as Starflight battled with himself.
Tell her.
Never.
"There's nothing you can do, Fatespeaker. Leave, I mean it."
She didn't. She just sat there, staring at him, his own eyes trained on the moon throughout the night. The silence between them was never disturbed, and eventually the tension seemed to fade. Starflight's muscles relaxed eventually, caution ebbing from his mind.
Tonight they shared the moon.
Starflight didn't say anything as Fatespeaker sat mere meters behind. He did wonder whether the tickle of the moon felt the same to her, though.
No, he thought. It didn't. The star-spangled sky used to be a friend excitedly sharing with him their collection of snowglobes. Why would it be any different for her? A bubble of loathing and another of guilt rose in his gut. Now, the sky dripped with condescending truth. His eyes were cratered, and so was his soul. Stained by the ash of that accursed volcano.
"Why are you here, Fatespeaker?" he sighed eventually. His muzzle rested against his shoulder as he "looked" at her. "Tell me the truth."
He wilted as he knew her gaze lay on the silver carcasses lolling around in his skull. "Will you do the same?" she whispered with an underlying tone of hope, sparkling like cinders in campfire fodder. Her rigid posture drooped at Starflight's head's delayed shake.
"I… I shouldn't." A jolt arced up his spine as a talon touched his back.
"Please…"
"Why… why are you here?" he repeated.
A muffled sob hurt his ears. "B-because I c-care about you, Starflight. Why can't you see that?"
He turned on her, his wings snapping open, careening the claw on his torso back to her. "I can't see, Fatespeaker. Why can't you see that! I'm useless, okay? Even for the 'prophecy', I was. While Glory and Tsunami were busy making decisions, I was in the Night Kingdom betraying them! While I sat bandaged and comatose in a tree, Sunny was kidnapped!" His voice went hoarse. "Sunny…."
Fatespeaker had moved back, the floorboards creaking under her as she trembled with shame and horror. "Starflight, none of that's true. You're smart, you're resourceful… the others need you."
"Why? They never did before. Even now I'm just the feeble librarian dragonets are sent up to hear a boring lecture from after they broke some meaningless rule. Even now I'm just the blind caretaker nobody thinks enough of to talk to. Do you understand? Nobody likes me! Nobody wants me!"
"I WANT YOU!" she shouted, the sobs ripping a scar right next to the pits of ash deep in his heart. "I w-want you," she cried, her talons meeting her eyes in desperate attempts to wipe the tears away. Slowly, she turned, and Fatespeaker limped down the hall heaving for breath.
He watched as she went. He knew he should chase after her, maybe he wanted to. But with a doleful shake of his head, he turned, sulking back to his window… where a numbed tear ran down his cheek. That's all he felt now. That numbness. And the shame. His head dipped and a few more tears ran, many more choked by his clenched eyelids.
He sat alone tonight. He felt the light of the moon against him, reprimanding him viciously. He wilted with shame. Fatespeaker hadn't returned. Maybe he should seek her out. Maybe he should apologize. He didn't though, and it hurt him so much. It hurt her so much. Another throb of his heart, but he was useless to make the pangs go away.
"I want you." That's what she'd said. He didn't know whether it was true. He doubted it, but still the glimmer of hope was a small flame in his cold heart. The thaw only caused him to look back with deeper shame at his actions. He should really apologize…
In the Nightwing Kingdom, he'd trembled at the prospect of doing anything. Facing the isolated Skywing outpost he'd doubted himself, and had later been too afraid to act against Squid's banishment. Atop of the pillars of the Skywing Arena, he'd sat petrified, safe, when Clay skirmished with Fjord. He'd bowed low before Queen Scarlet as Clay and Tsunami bet their lives. As always his tumult of thoughts took precedent over his actions, and he remained fixed to the horizon.
His thoughts bled to his face, a grim frown etched in his muzzle. Starflight would sigh and shake his head as his mind ran in circles. It always came back to the gentle, even if naive, Nightwing who'd held his talon as he took his first tentative steps blind. Really, everything came back to her. Starflight remembered how it'd been Fatespeaker's antics which ended up pushing his trepidatious self out of the cave Morrowseer dropped them in. While Starflight had never done enough for Squid, he still remembered vividly how Fatespeaker clung to his side and tail, looking devastated. It'd been her constant strength for her beliefs that eventually facilitated growing his own, even if meager, confidence. Maybe the Skywing Arena situation would've gone smoother if he had that dragoness at his side.
Starflight's position finally shifted as his opaque eyes tore from the sky's canvas, the starry night being traded for wooden racks of scrolls. It was all black anyway.
His slow, uneven steps resounded off the creaky boards and to his ears, which flicked madly in a muted nervousness. The numb hadn't wore off, but a small tingle of hope in his bones reprieved him, even if only for tonight. For the first time in awhile, other than cafeteria visits, Starflight stepped from the security of his library.
His claws rapped against the wooden door fit snug in the bordering stone. "Fatespeaker?" he called out hesitantly. "Are… are you in there?"
Silence followed, and as his confidence rippled and crumpled in on itself; Starflight prepared to leave. Then a muffled little thump followed by a yelp echoed through the tunnel. "Starflight?" Fatespeaker called, throwing open the door. Her tone lit up a little when she faced him. "You came!"
He paused, surprised. Did she expect me? "Um, yes," he muttered with a hushed voice. "I did."
She waved toward him eagerly. "Come in! Or do we need to get you a new exercise program? You know, I heard Glory's doing great stuff with Silver, really making him flex those sloth reflexes. We could ask her for some fitness recommendations." He heard her stance go rigid. "Joke! Nothing offensive, I promise. It was just a joke."
Starflight nodded slowly, fighting off the heat in his cheeks. He left a solemn few pats of his talon along his underbelly. Maybe I should work on my—
"So, what brings you here today?" Fatespeaker asked. Starflight noticed her voice take on an underlying nervous edge.
"I'd like to apologize, Fatespeaker," he started, "for my… crudeness? I haven't been feeling optimal lately, and have been rude… to you… yeah." He breathed, his ears flicking toward her expectantly.
Starflight practically felt the grim blooming across her muzzle. At the same time, intrigue bloomed in him. "Actually, wait. Did you genuinely expect me to come? You're acting… happier than before."
A clear image of her toothy grin formed in his mind as his madly twitching ears sensed the soft clinks of ebony scales tapping against one another emanating from in front of him. "It's almost like I had a… vision." She whispered the last bit.
Starflight closed his eyes with more pressure than usual, though he couldn't stop his lips from pursing slightly, going on to form a smirk. "Is that so?" he choked. "I thought you gave that up awhile ago."
She sighed. "I did. There's only so many times you can watch an actual prophet half your age save the world before you question your legitimacy." Starflight nodded. Moonwatcher had done much for the school, so much in fact that Starflight began to question his own legitimacy. It wouldn't be the first time. He really was just usel—
Talons met his cheek, a stinging sensation left in wake of the claws. "Ow… what was that for?" Starflight yelped.
Fatespeaker's stance changed. "Don't make me hit you again." Starflight wilted a bit. "I've known you long enough to realize when your thoughts turn down the 'I'm useless' path that's completely and utterly false." Starflight opened his mouth to disagree, but Fatespeaker continued on first. "Don't you dare," she warned. "I'll hit you again if you say it." Her eyes were probably narrowed slits, he felt. "Don't… you… dare."
Silence pressed on them both as they sat "staring" at each other with a vengeance. Then, Starflight chuckled, which soon evolved into a full on laugh.
He pushed the throat-clenching pain to the back of his mind; he decided that he could enjoy himself for at least tonight.
"Thank you, Fatespeaker… I needed that." A talon patted his shoulder and a wing wrapped halfway around him, cloaking him in warmth.
"Anytime, I needed that to." Starflight looked up at her in question before his head darted down in shame. His mind quickly laid out all the times he'd pushed her away, leaving Fatespeaker a moping mess. "I just needed to know you weren't an insurmountable barrier, Starflight," she whispered. Her muscles drooped. "I won't lie, it hurts to be rejected so many times all the while the one you care for suffers." He felt her nuzzle his shoulder, her cheek pressing against his scales. He leaned inward slightly. "But enough of that…."
"So… what do you want to do now?" he inquired. "I didn't really think past my apology."
Fatespeaker's wing pulled off him as their tails entwined. "You not thinking?" she snorted. "I doubt that." A moment of silence passed, then Fatespeaker asked, "Starflight… why do are you so sad? Why do you watch the moons?"
His muscles tensed, his breaths came faster, and his opaque eyes darted around the room aimlessly. "Please…?" she begged sweetly. "No more lies, no more running. Tell me, Starflight."
He retreated to the familiar statue position, but still, his eyes and ears landed in her direction. His breathing was tense, but still his heart throbbed. "D-do I have to?"
A talon met his cheek, and Starflight listened as Fatespeaker shifted to sit in front of him. "If you want it to get any better," she whispered, desperation and hope clear in her tone. Starflight feared the next word more than anything. Even standing in front of the Skywing outpost, watching the Nightwings snuff out the lives within with the ease of trained assassins, holding close the very same dragoness who now sat in front of him, he was never so afraid. So, it was with great pain he heard the next word. "Yes. Starflight, if you want it to ever get better, then the answer is yes.
His eyes closed tight and his flanks hit the floor. He felt nauseous, but all the same he opened his mouth. "What… what do you love the most, Fatespeaker?" he asked. He felt her tail constrict around his. "For me it was always my tribe and my friends. They were my only pillars in the pit of crushing responsibility the Talons threw us into. The five of us to end a twenty-year war? It seemed insane. Hell, it was insane." He sighed. "Of course my love for the tribe was merely an illusion. I'd read the Nightwing sagas and all about our fake heroic feats, so I learned to love the night in absence of these heroes. The stars… the silence… the moons. I watched them through the small hole in our learning cave, almost every night, whenever I could. It made me feel connected to something beyond the stone walls around me. Then there was my friends. I do love them… but I always felt outside the main group of Tsunami, Glory, and Clay. They highlighted everything I wanted to be, and everything I felt that I wasn't great enough to become. So, I fell in love with the only other outlier, Sunny. Sweet and beautiful…," he hummed, then took a plunge. "Kind of like you." He smiled up to Fatespeaker.
A wing wrapped back around him and a purring muzzle began rubbing into his back. "I had everything I cared about systematically ripped away. My tribe turned out to be a group of half-starved maniacs, my father cruel and racist, my first love broke my heart, then… I had even the comforting moonlight burn away as my eyes were scalded with that damned volcano's heat." He lay his cheek against Fatespeaker's neck. "I guess the moons just serve as reminders for what could've been… for all that I lost."
"Oh, Starflight," Fatespeaker hummed affectionately. "I'm sorry." A talon felt his cheek softly, where a small track of tears tarnished his ebony scales. The claws hovered over his scarred eyes. "But please don't let what happened own you… it'll get better."
"Will it?" he croaked, unconvinced. "Fatespeaker… it's been like this for so long. How will it ever change?"
"Because, Starflight," she whispered back, voice hoarse with grief and ripe with hope, "this time I'll be there, every step of the way. Let me be your moon… and I promise you'll never lose sight of me."
Author's Notes: That last line made this whole thing worth writing for me. Anyway, this was another one of my character experiments. I'm just testing how these characters interact and what their particular grievances are for something else I'm writing. I tried mixing Fatespeaker's goofiness while keeping her semi-serious because the mood required it, and I think I met that goal with mild success. Many things could be improved here, though.
With Thanksgiving and everything, I don't have the time necessary to edit beyond a cursory read, so I do hope it's alright as it is. The only major issue beyond the second half's pacing is that I feel too much melodrama crept in.
This story was heavily inspired by I Watch the Moon by zeus_tfc on Fimfiction (it's a My Little Pony fanfiction). It's basically this but fifty times more beautiful and ten million times better done. Seriously, if you like MLP and ship TwiLuna, or simply like depression-based romances, it's a phenomenal read. I would feel dirty if I didn't give that writer at least partial credit for my inspiration. Also, I wrote this while listening to Time in a Bottle and Drops of Jupiter… the feels man… the feels.
Anyway, that's all for now. Goodbye!