SMALLEST LIGHT | SHADOW & BONE

i, six

Their silhouettes were consumed within the treeline, the meadow vanishing past the ridge as it converted into rough terrain of the woodland. She hadn't recognised her surroundings in the nocturnal, not realised where they had been headed was like a sanctuary to breathe for him.

The calm and almost soundless pour of water seeping down the green troubled rock of the water feature meeting the sound of the low breathing of their horses being abandoned in the distance. The crunching of dead leafs beneath their soles as the fountain's white had turned a horrid looking grey the closer they had come to it.

As tradition he had brought a coin, for he had never failed to believe in the superstition of the coin in the fountain, fingers turning it between his fingers before handing it out to her. Normally there had been two but tonight there had only been one. "I want you to make a promise."

"A promise?" Emiliya's eyes, brows slightly drawn into a grown as she looked down at the coinage as she reached up her to it, but each had been unmoving as it floated between their hands before meeting his' gaze again, "I need you to promise me that the wish you make tonight is not to be anybody else."

"If this is a promise we make," She closed the space between them, folding her left hand around the one holding the coin. Her blue eyes shortly met the starlit skies shining above them through curtain of dead leafs and the crisp air of late spring's winter blushing their cheeks. "Then promise me this too. I need you to promise me you don't either."

"You were just a boy, Aleksander. Burdened with such power but blessed and brilliant, and even if it is for eternity you shall never walk alone." The twenty-one year old placed her other hand on the fabric of the cloak, right above where his heart was hidden beneath the many layers of material skin. "Because no matter how many times you need to change your name, the game stays the same, but you should never wish to be anyone else."

He looked down upon her as if she had fallen from the heavens right there and then upon the mention of the words, fingers reaching to cover the one upon his chest, gaze trailing down from hers to their conjoining limbs. An offer he had long anticipated to make known but had never found its time for, hadn't possessed what he needed to do so but it had all aligned that night.

To make a promise is to have some heart and hold to your chest, it was a vow made to be kept until your dying day. It was like sharing a secret, even a wish wasn't supposed to be known by another; you were never meant to share it. To wish to be another had once been a need to want to change even if almost all before you had been everything you wanted even if it had not been all you desired, to wish even for one night to be you was to accept that the person you had been could still achieve the things you wished you wanted to change without needing to alter being.

Such a promise needed no seal bound by words, it needed to be sealed with a kiss on that very coin lips warm against the cold silver as his would follow to bind its vow before being tossed, eyes closed until the sound of the silver being tossed in the air. They watched the coin swell ripples in the moonlight's water of the fountain, a coin sealed with two sides of history bound by the same fate in the imminent.

A content silence had fallen between them, the touch of his lips meeting the side of her forehead as she stared at the cascading of water into the pit of the fountain. "Emiliya will you stand by me?"

The words were a mere whisper against her red locks, feared she had almost imagined them in the hushed atmosphere of the woods. Her fingers had tightened around their intertwined hands, "Aleksander?"

There it was again, her voice frowning with as much as her features at the words he had spoken. She almost dreaded that whatever had been happening at the Fold was something terrible, something he may have wanted to protect her by not saying even if she had faced a round trip through it every now and then already. It had caused her to step backwards in hopes to find answers written upon his face but there had been none, not the ones that would mean concern or gruesome detailing. But Emiliya herself had grown worried, a feeling that threatened to surge into him from her fingers into his, dared not look her in the eye for reasons she didn't understand.