Disclaimer: See Mr. Gaiman (otherwise known as God). See The Endless. They belong to Mr. Gaiman, aka God. See Del. See Del borrowing The Endless. See that Del has no fucking money because she works in a wig shop, and therefore it is pointless to sue her. Don't sue her.
Dedication: To the real Desire, from her smile.
~~Outside~~
"Yours are bigger. They're pretty."
A moment's consideration, and they're released. Relieved to be free, they beat their delicate wings and shoot upwards, aiming for the sun and for salvation. They spiral upwards together in a glowing translucent mist of snow-white, chattering among themselves.
"Yes ... but you make colours better."
A second cloud appears from nowhere; blots of purples, reds, blues, greens, golds, ivory, ebony, jade and pearl twist in and out of each others paths on wings made of little but air. They are as transient as soap bubbles, as graceful and as purposeless. They are watched by two pairs of eyes as they follow, in a much more haphazard and confusing fashion, the route of the previous cloud of wings.
"Colours taste funny."
"Some of them do."
Silence as this exchange is considered with the deepest of cognition. "Have you ever tried to make blue dining table pancakes?"
"Can't say I have, lover, can't say I have."
"Oh. They don't work very well - the dining tables get stuck to the ceiling and then all the blue runs out of the pancake and if you don't concentrate for very long the ceiling turns into a frog and eats it all."
Another silence, a warm one with the suggestion of fingertips brushing together in that ancient and most chaste of kisses. The white cloud has disappeared from sight; whether it has actually succeeded in reaching the sun and therefore obliterating its own existance remains to be seen.
"I suspect that's a problem only you have, dearest."
"Mmm."
This silence is as long as sunset, as warm as midsummer's eve by a piled bonfire; midsummer's eve without the sacrifice and the screaming; the tamer, sweeter midsummer's eve with spiced wine and middle-aged, middle-class women singing songs that were written by an Aborigini sage. He wrote them from his home in San Francisco, giggling and taking sips from a bottle of Jim Beam, convinced that Westerners were indeed crazy and would buy just about anything if you could stick a label on it. Guilt? Maybe.
Back in the unplace that feels like summer grass coiling softly over two pairs of bare and happy feet, the second cloud has reached its zenith and vanishes into the deepening blue of the sky. Night is drawing in, but the cloud-free air retains a clearness which few places can show any longer. The larger pair of feet brushes against the smaller, strokes the arch of them with dexterous toes that have all the skill and agility of their owner's fingers. There is, predictibly, a very contented sigh.
"Del."
"Mmm?"
"One of your butterflies has got caught in my hair." There is a rustle, and something small and struggling is removed from immaculate thick black hair. The only way something could get caught in that forest is on purpose; it begs to have fingers run through it, lips pressed against it words muttered into it in the low, dreamy tones of infatuation. It deserves to be inhaled for a scent like hemp, like lavender, like musk, like every fragrance that ever made anyone dizzy with lust.
Between smooth thumb and forefinger, topped with gilded nails, a classic Hallmark Valentine's heart is twisting and swearing, kicking its arms and legs viciously and trying to bite the polished perfection of its captor with teeth it doesn't have.
"Hearts, Del? A bit twee, isn't it?"
"That wasn't me. That was you."
The heart is not a heart. It is a feather, five inches long and dazzlingly white; as pale and unnaturally glowing as a bad special effect. At first it is stiff and strong; a pinion from the wing of some large bird, perhaps a swan, perhaps something ... other. But as it descends it ripples slowly into something more wispy; an ostrich tail-feather; etherally soft, demonically ticklish.
It is rubbed without warning on the sole of a bare foot (whose toenails were blue a second ago, but are now plain again, sparkling slightly) and a gale of indignant giggling stirs the air. Words form in the breeze and are discorpriated almost immediately. The feather stops, raises, and five feet three inches higher is tapped with tenderness against still-smiling lips.
"I think I will call them Flutterby-utterly-flibbits," announces the smiler, her hair catching the last of the light in a net made of tangled gold, emerald and ruby. It is the kind of hair mothers despair over and grandmothers run from, and when she speaks a dog's squeaking chew toy floats into the void and runs yapping around the forming stars. "Desire? What will you call yours? They've gone but what will you call them when they come back?"
"Angels, my precious. And who says they will come back?"