A/N- Yes, hello, it's me again with my incessant TwigMaugin love! I don't own anything except my own work, I don't own Maugin though I look like her a little and I don't own Twig but I wish I did...ahem. This is a ONESHOT and it's fairly angsty although it's rated M for the small love scene flashback later on.
DISCLAIMER- I don't own the Edge or Twig or Maugin. I am not Paul Stewart unfortunately. Please don't sue me, I'm just a kid, I get minimum wage and I live off beans in University. R&R!
Lost as far as the heart of the Deepwoods grew, beyond the Nightwoods and the brutal existence of waif country, over the perilous edge of a sudden craggy cliff face and down- or was it up?
Above the clouds and amongst the lush greenery and rich scents, the clear pool which spilled over a lip of rock and down so far it was impossible to hear it splash, underneath a spreading lullabee tree sat a lone figure, lost in contemplation, hands folded in her lap and eyes cast to the horizon, awaiting something.
Awaiting someone.
The lullabee's melancholy melody whispered at her pointed ear tips and washed over her with a sadness she knew only too well. A sadness that not many who heard the tree's singing could fully understand.
But Maugin knew only too well of the sadness. It gripped her, held her tight and suffocated her every night as she tried to rest her tortured head. It nagged at her as she remembered his touch, his kiss, their pure love. It gnawed at the very depths of her soul like an angry woodweevil and she was powerless to do anything but let it wash over her as she immersed herself in her thoughts and memories.
He had sworn he would return. His eyes were truthful, she knew him too well to know he would ever lie or let his crew down. And so Captain Twig had left her along with Woodfish and Goom and gone on a skyfired branch with his young apprentice. Whether he had made it was obvious, as the last drop had fallen from the mighty peak of Riverrise and the Mother Storm had rolled across the sky, Maugin had closed her eyes, whispering the few trog prayers she knew from childhood, hoping that he might be safe and return to his crew.
Return to her.
The Mother Storm arrived , unimpeded, her anger terrible and yet magnificent as the rains pelted down in silver threads, battering trees, turning the ground to mulch, soaking Maugin and her companions to the skin. The waters of Riverrise flowed again in an unstoppable torrent from the lip of the towering rock face and all around them blooms of every colour split open revealing such beauty it had made her head spin. Tangerine on turquoise, flamingo on gold, viridian on cerise...such contrast and brightness she had never seen before, not even when she had ventured up from her underground home and spent that little time in the Deepwoods before being snatched by slavers. Her senses were on fire and she closed her tired eyes remembering, a small smile plucking at the corners of her rosebud lips.
Every raindrop she felt, every lightening crack was magnified, every scent sent wild shivers up her spine and the colours...she could never stop looking and she would never forget the intense feeling that had washed over her as she and the two other crew members were caught up in the weather and threw themselves out from under the trees to dance in the rain, their arms thrown wide and mouths open laughing and cheering and in Goom's case, yodelling their delight across the Sky.
"He's done it! He released the chain! The Edge is saved! We are saved! He's coming back and we shall soar across this newly seeded Edge together unchecked, wild and free forever!"
Her own words came back to her now and her eyes snapped open.
He's coming back.
Long years they had waited. The garden of Riverrise catered for their every hunger and thirst and their own company keeping their minds active. But each one was thinking the same and it did not need Woodfish with his waif ways to read what each had playing over and over in their minds. Why did Twig not come? Where was the magnificent skyship which must, surely, one day soar over and take them away from this ancient place?
They had all believed he would come. He would keep his promise. It was all they clung to.
It had been twenty long years when old age caught up with Goom, his old leg scar had been accosting him for some time and it was with a final "T-wuh-g...fr-uh-nz..." that he had breathed his last and his huge but impossibly gentle paw dropped from Maugin's own hand. Sending the funeral pyre off into the sky was hard enough but now with just the two of them left and still no Twig after twenty summers, each felt even more inclined to talk of their past adventures on board the Edgedancer and before that, the Stormchaser and even before that, the Galerider.
It was seventeen years before Maugin had to build another funeral pyre. This time alone for Woodfish as he had passed with just a single look and a few words inside her head;
Don't give up on him.
She was alone now. She had been for another twenty seven years now. She looked down at her own hands, wrenching herself from her thoughts for a few moments. They were as pale and unblemished as the day she had first met Quint in the slave market and he had saved her life. A sudden urge pulsed through her and she stood up, walked a few steps and sat by the edge of the great pool that shone like a burnished mirror before her.
Her pale oval face was as smooth as ever, the porcelain skin unbroken by scars and untouched by mortal age. Her long vivid orange hair passed over her shoulders and lay in beautiful deep waves around her collarbone and waist and in the midst of delicate features, two round silver eyes fringed with long black lashes looked back at her, and even though she knew it to be her own reflection, she did not truly know the other looking back at her. The eyes...her own eyes...they were full of the sorrow and disappointment of a thousand lost years and not merely sixty and more. The wisdom inside each shining silvery orb was too much to contain in any Sanctaphrax library, in any great mind or in any number of scrolls. And yet the tiniest glimmer of hope set alight by the burning power of the love she kept deep inside her heart was alive inside her eyes. She knew when she looked she could not give up. She loved him more than anyone else ever could and it would never go away, her heart would not forget him, she could not abandon him and most of all, she could not, she would not believe he would ever leave her.
She stood up, looking out over the vast cloudbanks that obscured anything but the gardens in which she had dwelt without ever aging these past many years. The lush green foliage brushed her back and she ran her fingers along the silvery bark of a lufwood tree as she passed on her way to her favourite spot. The sun was about to set and every time it did, she made a wish. A wish to bring him back to her as he had promised. She knew he would come back, she loved him and he loved her. She had known since the first time she had kissed him back in the creaking wreck of the Windcutter and
he had held her close every night since and loved her many times over in their quarters until they embarked upon that fateful voyage into Open Sky and she had waited for him at Riverrise. He had come for her then, as she knew he would and he would come again she knew.
She paused, her eyes closed for half a second as she remembered their last night before they had set out into Open Sky.
"Maugin...stay with me always, I will bring back the furthest star over Open Sky for you if you will be mine forever,"
"I will stay, you know I will. I could never leave you Twig...could you ever leave me?"
"Not even every Leaguesman with ten swords, not forty thousand sky ships, not even the Edge itself could stand between me staying by your side. I would walk the Edge ten times over for you and always return to the place I love most which is by your side."
"And I would skyfire myself over the Edge itself to follow you, to stay with you...I love you Twig,"
His lips found hers as their eyelashes tangled, noses brushing slightly as they kissed in the double hammock in the Captain's quarters. His hands were buried in her fiery hair and hers found their place either side of his straight and elegant jaw that made him look so like the father he was searching for. Her hands wandered down his bare chest and across the fine scattering of dark curls she knew so well and rested just across his hipbone, their kiss deepening as Twig's tongue dared to taste the inside of Maugin's mouth as it had so many times before this night. He moved swiftly and as the moon passed over the round porthole above the hammock, the scene was bathed in moonlight, Twig lay on top of Maugin, their kisses deep and full of a love that could never be expressed in any other way, their bodies intertwined under the pale silver light cast by the moon and far away, a caterbird, or rather The Caterbird as they all considered themselves to be one and the same flew across the moon as a streak of darkness.
"I shall love you until there is not a breath left in me. And I will always, always return to you, know that and you shall know me Maugin," whispered Twig, breathless and glistening with sweat after their lovemaking. Maugin smiled up at him and looked deep into the glittering emerald eyes that told her so much before they lay together in sleep, his hand locked over hers and their noses barely touching in an embrace that Maugin could still remember even to this sunset.
Tears were slipping from her face thick and fast and she was powerless to stop this cascade, but then again, she knew she had to let it out, let out all the bottled up fear and love and pain and the sheer agony of missing Twig that stabbed at her heart and left her feeling almost dead.
The sun slipped over the Edge as it had done these sixty years and more and as the sky burst into bright pink shot with golden fronds, Maugin closed her eyes and wished for him to return to her, return as he had always promised he would and return as she had to believe he would. As she closed her eyes, she missed the magnificent sight of a Caterbird, or rather, The Caterbird as they all considered themselves one and the same passing over the dying sun with a tiny ragged bundle in its claws and on over the Edge.
She would go on waiting, as long as it took, as long as she knew that he was coming for her, she would stay for him and only him, her heart was bound by its unbreakable love and she knew however far away he was right at that moment, he loved her.
R&R please! No abuse please or I shall be very sad...even sadder than I was when I wrote this. I cried.