A/N: For dgray-contest week #2 theme, white.
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all the wide world
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In Paris he buys her coffee. It prowls within the confines of its pale cup, hot and dark as jungle nights.
She drinks it slowly and lets it curl up in her belly, warm, languorous. It makes the edges of things sharper but somehow less real. The bitter aftertaste lingers for what seems like hours.
Unhurried, they wander through enchanted streets, marveling at ordinary things made wondrous by their unfamiliarity. He tells her things he knows about everything they see. She believes them because he says them, because one who carries all the truth he meets in a locked library behind his eyes has no need to make up lovely stories.
Miranda savours it all. She is so seldom given gifts.
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In spring he finds a hillside, not very far at all from the tower by the sea, which has no memory of salt.
The earth is damp, the old brown flowers of yesteryear rotting against it, what new grass there is struggling brightly through thickets of dried yellow ghosts. The sky is a heavy blue which presses down on their heads and makes it hard to do anything but breathe.
Lavi sits down, heedless of the dew, and pulls her down by her hand beside him.
Behind them and beside them there are tall dark trees, old and frosted with hoary moss, and more sweeping out from the base of the hill, but from where they sit all the way down it is clear and wild. The blind and busy wind rolls across it. It curls briefly in their dark clothing before tumbling blithely onward, unconcerned with their small warm presences.
Here and there, in the open spaces between hillocks of dead grass, small white flowers grow like weary stars.
He tears one up and threads it into her braided hair.
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In Romania he takes her swimming in cold mountain lakes.
Under the snow-bright sun his skin is pale as ivory, except where it is spotted with merry freckles. His nakedness hardly seems to concern him. Perhaps it is because the only one to see is her-- the thought warms her with the trust implicit in it. His hair is red as fire against the subdued greens and blues of this untouched place, a dancing fire to cheer her against the looming wilderness surrounding them.
Through a wobbly grin and chattering teeth he tells her the water's fine.
Emboldened by his unconcern, she undoes all her silver buttons and lets all her black leather defenses fall away. He smiles as she picks her timid way down the stony beach and takes a deep breath. With a splash, he opens his arms in a clear invitation to dance.
Miranda dives, and the ice-black water burns like redemption.
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In winter he teaches her to make snow-angels.
Her life has until now been a world in which there is no room for such things-- a narrow, dusty hall full of half-remembered relics of the dead. Her father had built it for her, and her mother had locked her in it and swallowed the key, and still the curse on her soul had managed to reach them both. At least as an orphan there had been no one left to fail at saving.
But his world is wider by far, full of things she has always believed beyond her reach-- icicle swordfights, the taste of seaside snow, wild delight in rosy cheeks and numb toes... smiles, as unforced and sweet as her old smiles had been bitter and harsh.
She sweeps her limbs through the snow as the last falling flakes sift through the air above her face, and feels her breath come long and deep into her creaking lungs.
There seems no end to the flawless white sky.
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In Vienna they climb to the very top of Stephansdom and look out across the sprawling, disorganized stone garden humanity has built for itself.
Later they go for ice cream, and try one of every flavour, even though by the time they get halfway through they are already feeling ill and their pocketbooks are weeping. Miranda's favourite is the delicate, subtle hazelnut. Lavi prefers the one that tastes of rum and butter, speckled with little dark raisins from the vineyards of Italy. They cannot take it with them. It is a fleeting luxury, though the cost of it endures. The summer sun would reduce it to bland, curdling soup in minutes.
Tiergarten Schönbrunn is lovely and full of mysteries, but despite its splendour it makes Miranda sad, so they don't stay long. She imagines she can feel the animals watching as she walks away, imagining her to be freer than them.
If they could listen and understand, she would explain to them how wrong they are.
Her cage is larger than theirs, its white bars are made of loyalty rather than iron, and she stays in it willingly because everything she cares for is in it with her, but it is still a cage.
Sometimes she wonders what it even means to be free.
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In autumn it rains, and they stay inside, leaning against the grey stone walls of home and hearing the stormclouds burst over the cliffs outside their narrow windows.
They talk, for hours into the night, sometimes until the dawn breaks pale and wan and spills its meager light onto the sea. It glimmers like dull silver far below, in time with the rhythm of their conversations. The topics wander from things they have seen to things they wish to see, from things they know to things they wish they knew, and sometimes they fall silent and watch the rain.
They never wonder about how they came to be friends. Even if there were an answer-- and this is not a certainty no matter which mathematical language one explains it in-- it is not of interest to them. How does the sky come to be blue? The answer is known, but hardly interesting in comparison with the shifting shades of a real springtime sky. They will leave the science and the truths to others like Komui, who find their own wonder in its strange, orderly progressions.
Now it is autumn, the sky roils in anticipation of winter, and the sea is white as angel wings.
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In Japan they stand on the ruins and remember.
The moon blazes overhead, mocking them with visions they can never erase, bright and untouchable as God himself. The devil does not always walk cloaked in shadow, they know.
Lavi's hand finds hers and holds tight.
The remembering is necessary, but fearful all the same, and what small comfort they can offer each other is gladly accepted. Like children they stand, hardly believing the great and terrible things the earth tells them they have wrought, their tales spelled out before them in broken white stones on long planes of black glass.
On the ship home, she finds him easily in the crowsnest. He likes high places. He likes being able to see very far, even if he can do nothing about what he sees.
Though the wind is cold and little can be seen through the evening mist, she sits at his side and keeps watch with him. An hour from morning, she falls asleep with her ear crushed against his shoulder. Lavi does not sleep, she notices in the murky half-world of growing dreams. Perhaps it is because he knows the devil does not fear the sun.
Even so, though the black ocean yaws beneath her and the sky is close around her head, she is hardly afraid at all.
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In summer, beneath a lazy evening sky, she tells him what she has learned about love.
Lavi smiles and promises to remember.
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A/N: Basically this whole story was an excuse for scenery porn, and I'm not sorry.