Sirius doesn't know her name, or where she's from. He doesn't know why she's here with him, in this strange, ever-changing limbo. She never tells, and he never asks. Sometimes he wants know her story, her past, her everything so badly it hurts. He won't ask, though, because he feels as if he shouldn't know, and maybe she wouldn't be able to answer his questions, anyway.
The mysteriousness is part of her beauty, he thinks. Some days (they aren't really days, Sirius knows this, but he feels the need to keep track of the time somehow), she wakes up as a young child, doe-eyes and almost infant-like. They play games then, hide-and-seek and I Spy. Sometimes she is older, a teenager; beautiful in her akwardness. Other times, she is his age, in her twenties (that's when Sirius likes her the most; graceful and willowy) and some days she is much older. It's different, then, because she is blurry and faded, like an old photograph that hasn't developed properly.
He doesn't understand her, nor does he pretend to. She can be sweet and happy at times, or angry and swearing. He doesn't comprehend when she kisses him, rough and wanton, only to soften moments later, caressing him like the sea does to the sky on a warm Summer's day. He doesn't complain, though, because tomorrow she might come to him a four-year-old and he won't know when she'll return to him as an adult.
Really, Sirius doesn't know who he himself is. He knows his name, that's all. He never says it aloud, though, and she never presses him for it. For that, he is grateful. He despises his name, and he doesn't even know why. To him, the words Sirius Orion Blackare ugly, and he doesn't want to reveal them. They are dirty, wrong. They don't belong to him. It's not something he could ever explain.
Sometimes, he forgets his name altogether, when she looks at him with her blue Kedavra eyes and her fiery touch burns his skin.
He doesn't count the days pass, but he knows that many have come and gone when something arrives to disrupt their oblivion. She is eleven that day, he's asked, and she is vulnerable and innocent. She cries out when they find a man, no, an adolescent, lying limp and face-down on the ground, and she hides behind Sirius when the stranger awakes. Sirius tries to comfort, but he can't stop her nervous trembling.
The stranger is blond and handsome, and when he turns to face Sirius and the girl, Sirius notices that his eyes are precisely the same shade of baby blue as his sometimes-lover's. He gasps, without quite knowing why. He feels as though this boy can look into his soul, see every kiss, hear every moan, feelevery touch. Sirius shivers involuntarily, and the girl comes out from behind him, looking up with doleful eyes.
'Oh.' A murmur, from the boy. Barely breathing, Sirius waits for him to say something else. Finally, after hours or minutes (one can never be sure in an eternity such as this), he does.
'Ariana,' he says, and she smiles.
