Disclaimer: Don't own anything!

Author's Note:

-/-/-

"Am I dreaming?"
"We all are."
-Mal and River (Firefly)

-/-/-

"What is that?"

Martel looked up, unsurprised to see Yuan. The four of them had been more or less ordered to not so much as step near the battlefield for a week. Or the clinic unless it was an absolute emergency, but that had been added as an afterthought.

"I used to know the word for it in elven, but I've forgotten it by now. I think humans call it quartz though." She held up the rock and it reflected the light powerfully.

"Quartz." The new word was awkward in Yuan's mouth even as Martel handed him the stone and he turned it over in his hands. The stone was pale pink, almost see-through. "Where'd you find this?"

"Out in the mountains when we were travelling back." Martel leaned back against the garden wall. It was very nearly winter soon, she could feel it. And the air had that crisp chill that was often the only warning sigh. "You know, there's an elven city made entirely of quartz."

"You've seen it?" Yuan could imagine it, almost. Some details escaped his mind, but he both like what he imagined and he didn't. It seemed too unnatural, an entire city built of this stone. It didn't have the same earthy quality that half-elven villages had.

"Once. It was summer then and all that quartz was reflecting and shining in the sun. They had towers so high, I thought that they were trying to get higher than the clouds. It was beautiful."

His lips quirked in a smile. "I thought all the elven cities were beautiful."

"I don't know. I've never seen most of them. But then, neither have most people. The elves love their secrecy too much."

"Mm. One day, we'll travel without this stupid war hanging over our heads and we can sleep easy under the stars."

"You dream real big, you know that?"

"And you don't?" Yuan said, smiling when she scrunched her nose, knowing he was right. "…Would you go with me? On a trip like that, I mean."

"Of course I would." She didn't even have to think about it.

His eyes lit up like a flare of fire even as his smile widened and he leaned back on his hands. He looked up as something cold dropped on his nose. "It's snowing."

Martel followed his eyes. "You know what I remember my father telling me once? That snow is actually small ice faeries, who kiss your skin before they melt away."

"I like that." And even though Yuan was getting a little cold, sitting here on the hard dirt, he had no want to move. Like here, in the midst of everything that was going on, there was some measure of a strange sort of serenity.

"I thought you would." Martel shifted so she could lean her head on his shoulder, content to not stand. "You like stories."

"Did I ever tell you about the one about the man with all the powers of Efreet?" Yuan knew that the stories that half-elves were told as children often changed by how close you were to the Summon Spirit and what region you were from. He'd heard four different versions of how Origin became the King and two of Celsius and her lover.

"I don't think so."

And so Yuan told her of the babe who was abandoned at the stairs of Efreet's temple. Efreet, taking pity on the child, raised him and so the child learned the art of fire magic. After the child was grown, he left the temple to travel the world he had never seen. During his travels, he fell in love with a woman, but the woman died soon after their marriage. Filled with grief and longing for her presence, the man wrote her name in the sky with fire so that the stars could whisper it back to him every night.

"…Do you ever wonder why we know such sad stories?" Martel asked.

Yuan shrugged a little. "I always figured that we had them because, otherwise, every story would feel the same because we wouldn't know what happy was without them."

Martel hummed in interest. "…D'you think you could ever go so far for someone you love?"

"What, like writing a name in the stars or travelling to Death's lair?" Yuan asked, remembering the stories he'd been told.

"Yeah. Would you ever be willing to do that?"

Yuan watched her. Her skin was settled a little too closely to bone thanks to thin rations and her hair had some leaves tangled in it. Her freckles had only increased after so much time in the sun and he knew her hands were rough with callouses.

She was lovely.

"…Yeah. I would." He said. "If I loved them, I would."

-/-

"What could you make of that, except to suspect some intensity in his conception of the affair that couldn't be measured?"
-The Great Gatsby—F. Scott Fitzgerald