I am a calamity. I fell from the skies and destroyed, and was destroyed. When you fall over and over, you lose
fragments of yourself.
I was a fragment.
My mother, she used to tell me look a shooting star. Look Rydia, my darling girl. Make a wish, make a wish.
Broken glass shines like a shooting star, in the light of Bahamut's flame. But nobody ever tells you to wish on
broken glass.
Will you wish on me, I had thought. Will you wish on me?
And I had opened my throat and my heart and my palms and I Called for magic to surge through me and leave me
empty.
Now I am a husk.
Blurs of my companions making camp cross my still gaze. I stiffly place my tent on the cold lunar ground, crawl inside and into my blankets. Rosa calls for me gently, but I don't open my mouth now. I had already opened it and the Calls rang out and my heart fell from my mouth and shattered. Silently I was gluing the pieces back together now. I heard Rosa shuffle softly away; she knew how too much magic at once could suck your soul through jet-black teeth. I could make out her gentle explanation to the others that I needed rest.
Rest was never so harrowing as repairing your soul.
But the dark hours passed slowly... slowly... slowly at last, and the others fell to quiet, uneasy sleep. The moon wasn't a place for unconsciousness. It didn't thrum right beneath you, this strange earth.
To think it was so comforting to me once, hanging in the sky.
I heard a breath outside the canvas cloth of my tent.
I felt as if a few words could escape from me now.
"Rosa?" I whispered weakly. Freshly mended.
The entrance unzipped, and a lithe shadow stepped in one sure foot at a time before sealing it back up. I watched the dim, glowing resonance of the moon catch on silver strands, flash briefly in pale eyes.
Edge didn't speak for a moment. He slowly took me in, lying on my cot and huddled in blankets, pale faced and dark eyed.
"What's wrong Rydia?"
Finally, his voice. Low, and with an odd tone he'd never chipped into it. Something I couldn't place, couldn't take in my hands and feel warmed. My eyelids fluttered and shut, trying to cloak some of the weakness pouring out of me.
"Just... tired," I sighed, blind to his expression.
It wasn't a lie. Not really.
"You didn't use to look so worn out after battles, but lately..." the ninja was speaking like the words were strangers, almost to himself. "And more and more often, you hit the hay as soon as we stop, and Rosa keeps saying you're just exhausted, but you never used to just... I mean, you would sit by the fire and make everyone smile no matter how bad the fights got, but now..."
I opened my lids slowly. Edge squatted before me, heat and confusion radiating from him, brows knit above his intense eyes.
"Listen," I spoke. He tensed just slightly. "It's just... the Summons..." I didn't understand why it was so hard to say it.
The ninja prince's gaze was level. "Does it hurt?"
I shook my head against my pillow, jade strands falling across my face. "No... but it takes pieces; they're hard to get back, and it takes time."
An explanation to fit my jig-sawed mind.
"Can I... can I help?" Edge suddenly looked so vulnerable. So out of place, the cocky ruffian trying to tape up a ram-shackle friend.
"Would you stay with me?" I chanced a look up at him, feeling simultaneously shamed and painfully hopeful. He looked like I'd shoved him from a balcony ledge and he was grasping now for balance.
"Uh... yeah, I mean..."
"Just until I'm asleep," I promised, a pleading tone winding into my words without permission. "I just get so wound up with thinking and remembering, and it's so cold here..."
It was so unlike me to ask. But right now, in the aftermath of my summoning, I was so unlike my usual self. No barriers or bluster.
"Yeah, I, uh, know what you mean." He rubbed the back of his neck with his hand. A few silent moments passed; I was beginning to feel less scraped-empty. He shifted a bit, uncomfortable.
"You could... just lay with me," I whispered. My face began to burn. "Just for a little while..."
"... Are you cold?" he whispered back. Like our voices would break this sudden tension strung between us, tugging us together. I felt like one of Edward's harp strings, waiting to be plucked.
I nodded, not daring to test my weight on my fragile-spun words. I shifted back, making room for him as he slid off his boots self-consciously and shrugged into the blanket beside me. The sudden warmth was like the sun striking off the desert sand; my body relaxed into the heavenly heat. Our arms were barely touching.
He let out a soft, heavy breath, like snowfall, and hooked a finger around the edge of his mask. Seeming full of thoughts elsewhere, he tugged the fabric down and around his neck. Immediately, I was fascinated by the planes of his cheeks, the line of his jaw. That curve of his pale lips in the dark.
I turned on my side to face him, trying to be inconspicuous about it, like the slightest movement would startle him.
He looked over, smirked gently. "Better now?"
I tried to fit a smile on my face. "Some." I was still aching from the magic that had ravaged through me earlier, but his presence was a welcome distraction.
After a few minutes of too-even breaths, he glanced at me again. His eyes widened.
"Rydia, what's the matter?" he said softly, and I suddenly became aware of warm wetness seeping from my eyes and down my cheeks, over the bridge of my nose.
"I- I... I don't know." My reply was husky. I closed my eyes tight, trying to stop the tears from leaking. What was wrong with me? I didn't weep often, and never in front of others. What-
I felt Edge gently put an arm around my waist. After a second's hesitation, he yanked me breathless flush against his chest. I couldn't find my words.
"'S okay," he whispered into my hair. I slowly relaxed into him, feeling like I was melting. Like all the little bits I'd been trying to pick up and carry with me had become a whole.
"Edge," I breathed into the hollow in his shoulder. "What if we don't ever make it back?"
"We will. I promise I'll get you back home..."
More tears slipped from my eyes, and I trembled slightly. The ninja swallowed and stroked my hair gently.
He started to sing, so very softly, in a language I didn't know. Immediately I stilled, listening as his song threaded through my hair; the melody was beautiful and loose with sadness. At some parts his voice would sink into a bare whisper, at others his low hum would press against me.
A lullaby...
Gradually, I sunk deep into the first real slumber I'd had on this cold, desolate satellite that orbited our distant dreams.