The Girl and the Boy had once dreamed of grand adventures. Adventures that had revolved around the stories Ana Kuya had told them. Of magical white deer that appeared at twilight and granted wishes to whoever caught them. Of mermaids who's voices summoned storms to wreck ships. Of moonlit forests where dark things lurked, and witches cooked magical feasts for those willing to pay the price. Of brave heros who found happy endings to their tales.
Reality, they found, was different now that they had finished their adventures. As were their dreams. The boy dreamed of a happy, peaceful home, where his beautiful wife's eyes weren't sad. Where he could hunt in the forest and bring home as much as he once had, to a happy son, and a wife who's fingers never stretched to touch the light that no longer answered her call.
The girl's dreams were different. Of gleaming golden domes and palaces where beautiful people called fire, wind, water, darkness, and light from their fingertips. Of workshops filled with purple clad figures bent over their tools, and warriors that could stop a heart with a flick of their fingers. She dreamed of a white stag that stepped through the twilight, of the pale prince who felled it with a black arrow, placed its antlers around her throat and called her power forth in a blaze of bright sunlight.
She dreamed of a too-clever fox that laughed and slipped them both from the Darklings clutches. A fox that captained a flying ship across the skies and hunted monsters from the protection of her light. Who turned to a handsome prince and whisked her away back to the court of a king she no longer wished to serve. A prince who smirked and promised to kiss her one day, when she was thinking of him, for he knew her heart belonged to another still. A prince who disappeared into the night and promised to return.
A prince who, against all odds survived, and found her again. Who flew her and her friends to a mountain stronghold and proved himself a good king time and again. Who brushed his lips against hers and held her hand through the night; whispering reassurences for her ears alone as the stars fell around them, as if the very heavens mourned for her loss. Who handed her an emerald ring and said that he would wait, wouldn't demand an answer from her, not yet.
A prince who became a king, a king of scars. Who asked her once more to stay, and let her go when she needed him to. Who had stared at the scars on his fingers that they both somehow knew would never heal. Asked in a small voice that didn't seem to fit the man she knew, if they had been friends.
It was hard to return to those dreams, return to an orphanage far away from the friends that made her forget her loss. Hard to return from the laughing prince who accepted her for who she was, to the tired hunter who scolded and held her hands till they no longer twitched toward the sunbeams. Most of all it was hard to return to the gaping hole where her power had once been.
When she woke from those dreams she shivered and curled her fingers toward the little window that was the only source of sunlight, flinching as the shadows leapt and danced on the walls. Then she would curl into herself till her husband woke and and reached to find her missing form.
