you have lost yourself in dreaming
I have lost myself in you
now we lie beneath the sky
stars and midnight blue

She doesn't stay.

Nothing can keep Raine from traveling on the wings of the wind, breezing through the ruins she adores. Likewise, nothing can distract Yuan from his duty to protect me. They feign annoyance at one another's stubbornness, and do not have to feign their disappointment at the prospects of parting, but they both know this is for the best. Whiling away the human equivalent of an eternity together doesn't sit well with either of them, especially after the several lifetimes Yuan spent with the same companions.

There is only one place still forbidden to Raine, and that is Heimdall. Elves neither forgive nor forget, with the exception of Virginia, but—knowing that her mother will consider her a stranger—it takes some time for Raine to muster the strength to visit Exire again. Once she finally does, they talk for hours, although she must hold back tears each time Virginia mentions her hopes for her daughter's future in a world still without the Wilder Reforms.

Meanwhile, Yuan speaks more freely in Raine's absence, keeping his voice alive more for her sake than his own. Sometimes he recalls his companions' speech so clearly that he responds aloud. Sometimes he sings songs he can barely remember, in a light and tentative tenor. More often, he tells me of worlds I have never truly seen and sensations I can never really experience, all in vivid detail.

In the margins of their personal lives, Yuan and Raine write often, sometimes even by human standards. Their messages are more status reports than anything else, but a thread of sentimentality winds through their correspondence nonetheless. So their letters find their way into one another's waiting hands, sometimes neatly addressed, other times through twists of fate I must facilitate.

Yuan, begins Raine, during an absence several years into this cycle, sitting at her brother's writing desk. Ozette remains intact, and under the same name. The forest has long since recovered from the flames of judgment, though it has taken me some time to venture into the town center now that it is so crowded. Each person here has their own tale. However, yours still captivates me most.

Even now, I think of you often. Sometimes, when I walk in the woods and close my eyes, I can almost feel you beside me. Perhaps absence really does makes the heart grow fonder, though it is not my heart that makes me wonder whether the forest floor is as comfortable a bed as your own.

Coloring slightly, Raine changes the subject to preserve what remains of her dignity. My brother—insisting that refusing to have any more children does not mean he can't take another wife—has remarried. His wife is half-elven as well, as were both her parents, and she is young enough that she has never known a divided world. Her mind and tongue are both sharp, but her eyes are always laughing. She reminds me of several of our late friends. I suspect that is why he married her.

I doubt I can stay here much longer, in a house so full, but it will still be a while longer before I come home. I want to check on my late husband's company, and visit some important graves. It's been decades since I've been there, and I think the time has come to tell them my own story.

Raine.

A pause, and then a hasty addition, in Elven: I didn't mention you, but Genis asks after your health, and wonders whether he should call you brother.

Yuan laughs a little, at that. Perhaps it is because he grew up believing himself human, or perhaps it is simply because he has lived so many years on the periphery of existence, but he finds it difficult to understand how tightly knit most half-elven families are. To Yuan, the same sense of belonging that might be comforting to most others feels suffocating even to imagine. In his life, just one other is enough.

Raine—

Your brother may call me whatever he wants. You may, as well, when you visit Altamira (or is it Lezareno now?). But I think 'Yuan' will suffice.

Here, little has changed, as ever. In your absence, I've been thinking more and more about my old friends. Sometimes I wonder what Kratos would have thought of us. I'm sure he could have guessed this end if he had stayed to see the beginning. As I recall, when I was first mortal, I was glad I wouldn't have to spend much more than half a century with such an observant human. The irony of the millennia that followed has never been lost on me.

But no matter what he might have thought, Kratos would have known better than to say anything. Offering his opinion was never in his nature to begin with, and if anyone had ever tried to tell me I could find this kind of contentment, I'd have dismissed them from my sight forever. I can never believe some things until I feel them. You are one of those things.

Often, I miss hearing your voice. Other times, my thoughts are neither so simple nor so pure. All the seasons have turned by now, and my bed is beginning to feel emptier. Yours must be as well, if you are considering the forest floor as an alternative. There was a time when I could have answered the question you did not quite ask, but my memory isn't what it used to be. Come home, and help me remember.

Yuan.

But, for all their written flirtation, it is not physical togetherness that either of them misses most. However much Raine delights in scattering Yuan's thoughts in the midst of his late-night storytelling, and however much he enjoys the slow passion of certain languid mornings, it is their unity of spirit that calls them back to one another most of all.

Yuan has learned to feel for Raine's return, a subtle shift in my mana as I reach out to her in welcome. She has brought him back to himself more completely than I ever could have done, and more completely than he ever could have known. They look at each other a little guardedly at first, too accustomed to distance to recognize one another so near—instinctively searching for a sign that they have truly reunited. And each time, they find it in one another's longing eyes.

"I am home, spark of my hearth," says Raine, in Celestial.

"Welcome back, my wandering star," says Yuan, in Elven.

They do not say they love one another, because love is still too delicate and dangerous a word to describe their feelings. Instead, they kiss, a more universal language than any of the three they collectively speak. The spirits of the departed are still too close at hand for either Yuan or Raine to admit that they have spent longer with one another than they ever did with the first companions of their lives, but they know it in themselves and guess it in one another. (And they have never called the wrong names.)

So time passes, with no room for emptiness in their days. Existence itself, as it happens, is enough. In balancing one another, they anchor themselves so as not to lose their way amid the rise and fall of ages. Yet they share a quiet certainty that they will never unlearn the lessons they have been taught. For each time they must part, they know they will meet again—even if not in this life, once time finally catches up with them too, then perhaps in the next.

No, Raine never stays, but she always comes back. In the end, that certainty is the only one Yuan needs.