I look up at the stars and I think about a lot of things. Things that I never say. Things that I never write down. Things that only the stars may ever know, if stars were to know anything. I've been telling them my secrets ever since I was a girl, my head too full of thoughts, ideas, and dreams to let me sleep, when they were my only company.
Tonight I tell them about the man sleeping in the room below the rooftop on which I recline now.
I still chuckle to myself over how everything was when it all started between him and I. My initial thought of him from afar was, "Oh look, another one." Another handsome face, striding around like nothing in the world could take him down. Nothing I hadn't already seen a thousand times before... right?
That impression was blasted six ways to the nearest of the Nether's hells when I came face to face with him, and he looked at me. He pinned me like a butterfly with his eyes, and I felt my heart stop. The realization that I was very wrong was instantaneous. He truly was exceptional, in so many ways. I had never known anyone quite like him at all. Honest, clever, endearing in his own eternally self-assured way. I liked him, I admired him... I trusted him...
I still don't know when it was exactly that it happened, only that I began to notice my heart skipping and my hands shaking a little when he was around. Whenever he made me blush I'd try to fight it down and hide it, but it was pointless, it never escaped him. Then there was how he never, ever failed to make me smile.
Took me long enough to own up to what I felt for him. Somehow, I fell into the grasp of a kind of magic that is as ancient as existence itself... One that I know I'll never be master of.
There was a part of me that was angry with him for it. Deep, feral, and furious. How dare he affect me so, and how dare I for letting him, it told me. No one and nothing can cage or tame what is born to burn the lights of heaven from the sky if it chooses! Impossible! Absurd! Deep within me it raged, and even now I still feel it, smoldering, bristling, and completely wild. An indomitable piece of me that will never be content to concede to being in anything else's power.
Like a phoenix, reluctant, unwilling of letting a falconer put his golden tags on her.
Funny thing was how quickly I realized that even if he could, he would never do that to me. Not in a thousand years, not in ten-thousand. We're of similar natures, he and I; we value our own freedom, and we don't seek to deny it in each other.
I sometimes think... that maybe that's how he knows.
Every time that I've told him that I need to be elsewhere, he lets me go... And, every time, I come back to him - willingly, happily, freely. I think, perhaps, that he prefers it that way. If I stay, he knows I stay because I can and I want to. That of all other places I could be and things that I could be doing, he is my choice. It's hard to tell sometimes, how much of the light in his eyes is happiness or pride in knowing this. He has every right to be both, I suppose.
Sometimes, he'll ask me to stay. He asks, and if I can, I do. I don't make him beg. I don't pretend that I'd rather be somewhere else, or that I'm inconvenienced. I just know that he wants me there, and so I stay.
There are no locked doors with him. No expectations. Just a reminder every once in a while that he's here, happy to welcome me home; that I can fly as far and as high as I as I desire, and still have a place with him when the netherwinds toss me his way again. And when I return, if there are any doubts, even small ones that I didn't know I had, he doesn't stop until he's dispelled every last one. Even with all the other things and faces that are in his world, he still made a place for me in it.
I don't forget what others have said of him. "Distraction" some have called him, "undeserving" others have deemed him. What do any of them know? They talk as if their thought on it even matters.
I have enough for my mind to dwell on without my heart, of all things, being put in the spotlight.
The last of some of the contracts I've kept will be coming to a close soon, and there's only so much that can be done or afforded to me by working under official sanction. I'll have to search through prospects for benefactors, or even take Lord Sunstriker's offer for Valéria, to ensure that she will at least be taken care of, and that's something I don't relish the idea of. It shouldn't have to come to that kind of decision.
I worry about the other half of the Thorne brothers. I wonder what Lutero thinks, what he does, what he plots, and I dread all the while that something out of sight lurks and waits... Waits for its moment, ever so patiently.
Most of all, I worry about Vethoreas. I still owe the nathrezim bastard a favor, and I can only hope that he doesn't try to involve more people I care about into his schemes. But he's cunning. He'll know how to push me to where he wants me, and once I'm in that place... What then? What cost is there really for what I did to save someone's life? Sometimes I wish I'd never bargained with him, that I'd just taken his blood, killed him, had done with it. I wouldn't have thought twice about it before the Sunwell was rekindled. Was I really such a different animal back then? I keep telling myself "there was no time, no other way," but it still feels like excuses.
These are things I tell the stars. Things I tell no one and nothing else. My deepest joy. My darkest fear.
But the hours drag on... Time for the phoenix to fly back down to her dear falconer. It wouldn't do for him to wake up and think I'd just gone and disappeared on him a second time.
... May all the gods save me from such a thing ever happening again.
Aranya's bare feet soundlessly touched down on the solid floor, light as air, magic dissipating around her. She pulled the throw blanket that she'd taken up with her for reclining on snugly about her, tucking it under her arms and giving it the vague appearance of a strapless gown on her.
Padding back into the room where Rhovin still lay, she paused to watch how the shadows and moonlight played over his form, the strange patterns they added to the planes of his stomach and shoulders, and the already-intricate designs inked on his arms (by miles more complex and impressive than the simple two that she had, on her wrist and on the back of her neck). The corner of her mouth pulled up as she looked at him. Even in his sleep, the lines of his mouth still gave the impression of that eternal smirk of his.
Or was he really asleep?
Aranya couldn't be sure. Rhovin had been a ranger, once, and rangers were skilled enough to feign death, surely he could feign sleep if he wanted to. Impulse overtook her, and whether or not he actually heard her, she said to his "sleeping" form what still terrified her too much to say to his face with his burning eyes open.
"I love you..." she said softly. "Curse you and bless you a thousand times for that." An affectionately wry smile blossomed over her face. "Because it's all your fault, you know."
Discarding the throw blanket, she suddenly noticed that her boots were not where she had left them. A quick scan about the room showed them to be nowhere in sight. She looked under what furniture was in the room, and they were still nowhere to be found. Aranya's mouth now gave a very different kind of wry twist.
Why you sneaky, son of a...
Moving to the foot of the mattress, she abruptly yanked what covers were on Rhovin away to the floor. "Where did you hide my boots?" she demanded, smile still on her face.
Rhovin had barely even registered what just happened, before suddenly - all in the blink of an eye - Aranya disappeared, then reappeared, straddling him and with her face scarcely inches from his. "Do I have to interrogate you? Hm?" she asked, playfully tilting her head to one side and quirking a brow. "Because I warn you, Thorne, I have worse ways than magic to make you beg for mercy." He didn't even get a chance to make a retort, before her hips slid down over his, and her mouth on his made any kind of coherent answer a high improbability.
It occurred to Aranya, perhaps a little too late, that maybe this wasn't the right way to discourage him from ever hiding her boots again.
What is she doing up there? I snore too loud, is it because I snore too loud? Why am I worrying about this? About her opinions, her perspective, her train of thought...
I can't help but wonder why. I think I know why...
The few times we get to spend more than a day together and she's not in my arms. I don't press. I know she'll make her way back, she always does. I don't think she truly realizes how happy she makes me, how everyday I look forward to seeing that door open and have her greet me with her smile.
Her arms, her lips, her skin.
I make love to her every night she stays with me, I feed her when she's famished, I entertain her when she's in need of it. I put everything about her and who she is before my own because that is how much important she is to me.
I even find myself fantasizing her being the mother of my children. Running along the fields of the Thorne estates, chasing the ones we brought to the world, our treasures, our future. My father accepting this, my brother accepting this... it was becoming more clear as the days go by.
I'm in love with you, Aranya Ver'Sarn.
I fall in love with you every day, and it is an unconditional love that grows each passing moment.
But how do I tell you...?
-
Rhovin was up to something before noticing Aranya's toes at the upper edge, lowering herself. He acted quickly, silently in his former ways.
But what she said caught his heart at his throat. The agonizing feeling of not reacting to what he himself could not say to his lover. But she can. Regardless if he is in slumber, she could speak the words. His heart fluttered and his mind melted.
She is the one. She is his life.
With little effort he kept his composure, that of a sleeping knight for the princess in need. But it wasn't long before she caught on to him. Sheets snatched and a straddling mage, Rhovin gasp feeling himself snug around her warmth, engulfed and complete.
Perhaps with a little more time, he can look her in the eyes and confess that his heart belonged to her.
With time.
Author's note: This was originally written Aug 1, 2014, and pertains to Aranya's on/off relationship with Rhovin Thorne over the years, and in particular, the moment when they both were coming to fully accept the full depth of what was always truly growing between them. This is also the FIRST EVER Things that Only Stars Hear that I ever wrote! Last section from Rhovin's point of view was written by his creator.