She watched him, as only a lover would, as he whirled around the dance floor, swinging his laughing, graceful sister in a wild, flowing, romp. Completely in time, completely disregarding it.
She watched him, later, green eyes sparkling like the forest in sunlight, as his brother shared a joke with him, and his delight was plain to everyone in the room.
She watched him, still later, as he frowned in his dream, the muscles in his shoulders and chest twitching, taut with reliving a skirmish in the North.
He would be remembered as Magnificent. She would remember how she always knew it would end. She wondered, before diving into the sea of his eyes with abandon, if it would be worth it. If only a little of him would be able to sustain a lifetime, even after he was gone, disappearing and returning to where he came from? Because she always knew that he would leave. Always.
Why else, she would ponder, sifting through memories like soggy tea leaves in a finite cup, would he have danced every dance, soaked up every story into his vast memory, laughed the loudest and mourned with the most sorrow?
She would always think of him as a demi-god. A mortal man with the twinkling eyes of a deity. When her hands became useless with their shaking, when her body began to sag under the weight of time and uncountable memories, she would think of his eyes and all that was attached to them. Of his calloused, graceful hands and his beautiful shoulders which bore the weight of the world and relished it, and she would stand straighter and bear the burden of her choice. To love him. Unquestioningly, completely, in the knowledge that he would be lost to her. Without the knowledge that she would ever see his face again.
Right after he left, she would wake sweating. Feeling him next to her, on top of her, inside her. Everywhere, overwhelming like he had been only days before. Lips, hands, legs, arms, hips tangling and twisting like the fauns on the Dancing Lawn only much wilder, much more beautiful, much more. And she would reach for him in the darkness, not just her hands but her lips and legs and heart and mind and she would search out the twinkle in his eyes with the deep caverns of her own, all the while knowing that she had brought this upon herself. All the while knowing that it was all she would ever have, this memory and this reaching, until the end of her days.
After a while it stopped. And the first morning that she woke from a dreamless, Peter-less sleep, she cried for a day, because she knew then, that no matter how much she had gotten from him, no matter how much they had given and taken, it could not have sustained a lifetime. And while she cried, she knew, that she had brought it upon herself. She had wanted to capture him, break off a piece of Peter for herself and cherish it. But he belonged to a different place, a different time, and she was forever stuck in the paradise that he had willingly left.
And though she saw him dance every dance, and shed every tear, and ring out every laugh of joy and amusement, she saw the distance in his eyes. The bleak knowledge of his impermanence, that it was all too good to last.
The day the Stag was spotted, they were sharing a lazy morning together. Touching and tasting languidly, their favourite kind of lazy day when the sun was high but the curtains were drawn and there was a tingle on their skin and a faint sheen of sweat. And then the rap at the door came, and it was Edmund. And it was what she always loved about him, that regal magnificence that couldn't turn down a challenge or an adventure. After all, it was what had led him to her. So she told him to go, and that if he caught something she would have a reward and she winked in a very un-ladylike way and he told her so. And their kiss goodbye was just that. Nothing earth-shattering or meaningful, and it was what she kicked herself for every day for the rest of her life.
When he left he didn't look back at her lying wanton on the bed, his shoulders were straight and tall and still bare and he looked like the god she thought he was and then he was gone and she knew that she had never had him. That they played and laughed and touched and tasted and relished in each other that to him she was just another dance to be performed. And eventually, it was what killed her. She lay in her bed and she thought of that morning, and memories surfaced into dreams, and from that dream, of the lavish kisses and teasing caresses she stopped breathing, and when the dryad found her one corner of her mouth was turned up in a wistful smile.
Was it days, or months, or years later when he woke with his bedsheets twisted? His body, lithe but still soft with youth and innocence glistened with sweat, and as he sat up, green eyes glowing in the dark, the images of his dream flashed before him. Dark, cavernous eyes that pulled him deep into her soul, and full, beautiful lips on a creamy landscape of soft curves. One corner of her mouth was turned up in a coy smile as she reached out to him. His tears fell, but he could not remember why.