The moon is for lovers; a perfect, silent, unjudging witness. A gentle lamp of soft shades that swallows the lovers sigh. The sun is for the fathers, laboring at the earth, and the mothers chase-scolding children through dusty yards. A light for the children scrabbling at the riverbanks or rolling in the grass. It's a guide for the restless and a balm for the sufferer. The moon, though, is different. It's a thing by which love lives or dies. The lover wakens with its powers or wanes with it, love failing like the dark with the approach of dawn. Love which glows by day finds its fever-pitch in the night. The moon is for lovers.
And so the moon sees the lovers, who communicate not through speaking but through the clasping of hands. One is big, tall and broad and strong; the other a slight, wispy thing that glows silvery in the moon-dust. These two walk together for a long moment, two things made one by the joining of their hands and hearts and minds, and the moon offers neither complaint or commiseration. It only lights a path for their feet and turns its great face to them without seeing. When their feet still in the grass far below and when the one folds the other in its strong embrace, the wind flows in bold rivulets like a too-long held sigh.
As the two stand oblivious in the sweet-smelling air, they see and hear nothing – not the moon above nor the dew-frosted grass below, not the night birds with their longing trills nor the reedy warbling of insects – but one another. The world is small now for the lovers. A closet-world with space but for the two of them. As the moon watches, the larger figure raises his hand gently, to cup confidently the cheek of the little face that looks, glowing, up into his. His thumb brushes across the soft lips which, waiting as they are, part slightly. Lips chase thumb and he dips his mouth to hers. The gently milling clouds above part for a moment, allowing the moons silver light to settle in softly glowing coils around the two. It's a lovers moon, binding as with magic these two that only it bears witness to. For these two it portends not the death of love but its birthing and then flourishing. It doesn't care for the worlds between that should separate them nor does it respect the conflicting boundaries that men and women create. This moon says lovers, not enemies, and so it is.
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Shingen brushes his lips to y/n's and slides his fingers around to the nape of her neck with the ease of a practiced lover. The other hand is on the small of her back, pressing her to him. He breaks the kiss, putting only the barest breadth between them and feels her breath hitch satisfyingly against his lips. It's not like Shingen to leave a woman waiting, not this woman anyway, and so he doesn't. He kisses her again, softly, and in reading the lines of her body, moves to deepen the kiss. Her mouth is shy but his has no such reservations. The fingers threaded through her hair hold her to him and his mouth leads hers. The big hand on the small of her back slides around her and draws her closer.
By the time he lets y/n go she's nearly reeling, panting for breath and trembling, her thoughts a jumble. Her fingers are balled into the cloth of his kimono and the arm around her waist more than half holds her up. Shingen smiles his knowing smile and asks, although he knows she's not:
"Are you cold?"
"No," she knows he knows she's not. She's pretty sure she's actually not far from bursting into flames, which she knows he also knows. Yet the love-light in his eyes won't let her be miffed at his teasing.
Shingen chuckles softly and then kisses y/n's forehead, smoothing the long tumble of hair back from her face and then hugging her to him, this time gently. He releases her then but reaches for her hand.
"We should return now. It grows late and," he pauses, looking to the firmament, "it's going to rain soon."
"Rain?" y/n asks, surprised. Even as she says it, she grows aware of the drop in temperature and of the fitfully blowing breeze. She see's that Shingen's face has grown dim, swathed in shadow as the clouds cross before the glowing face of the moon. She looks from Shingen to the sky, where a smattering of stars peer around and fitfully through the accumulating clouds, and then back to Shingen. She'd been so...distracted that she'd never even noticed the changing nightscape around her.
"Come, goddess," Shingen takes her hand with a broad smile, "Would you allow your faithful supplicant and servant the honor of escorting you back?"
"Yes," y/n says, giggling, "but you're my boyfriend, not my servant. And I'm not a goddess."
It's an oft-repeated line but he knows his platitudes please her and that pleases him.
"Oh but you are," Shingen stops and flashes a smile down at her, and then suddenly he drops to a knee still holding onto her hand, "You, y/n, are the goddess of my heart."
Y/n rolls her eyes at his excessive display, embarrassed, but she's smiling and trying to contain her laughter. She swats at his shoulder.
"You're ridiculous! Get up before someone sees you," although when she casts about, she can see no one. No, there is no witness but that lovers moon and he has swathed his face in cloud to give the two their privacy.
"I don't care who sees," Shingen declared, and he didn't. Still, he did as the laughing woman commanded and rose to his feet. As he came up, though, he caught her about the waist and lifted her, shrieking laughter and protests, from the ground. He held her there with her hands on his shoulder, smiling broadly up into her face.
"Put me down!" y/n protested, but any note of command in her voice is lost in laughter and softened beautifully by her smile.
"In a moment," Shingen said softly, "I like looking at you like this."
And he did. Her pale little arms stretched up from his shoulders to her face. Her kimono, loosened by their play, was open at her neck showing the prettily flushed skin there. Her long hair, which she had not put up, hung loose down around her face. Yes, she was a goddess. She was a goddess and his love made him burn for her. Her beauty intoxicated him. He was very ready to return her to their rooms now, but not because of any fear of the rain.
Y/n felt the shift in the atmosphere, read it on his face and in the hands that held her. It thrilled and excited her even as she felt a self-conscious blush rise to her face.
"You said yourself it was going to rain, Shingen. Put me down."
"For a kiss," he said, and she was happy to oblige.
He lowered her to her feet but kept his arms wrapped around her. Her little hands moved of their own accord to his lightly stubbled cheeks and this time it was she who held his mouth to hers. Their mouths moved hungrily together in a sweet, perfect cadence. She, stretching up on her toes, moved her arms to lace about his neck tightly. Shingen's left arm released her and the hand moved to the loosened neckline of her kimono, the calloused skin sending thrills that wracked through her and caused her mouth to break away in a gasping pant. Shingen recaptured y/n's lips again, though, and pushed the shoulder of her kimono farther out of the way so that he could free her skin before his searching hand. Y/n moved forward into that hand, against his gently caressing thumb. The rough hand on her soft, sensitive flesh forced a moan free of her lips, the lower of which Shingen caught gently between his teeth.
It was the rain that finally woke them to their surroundings and stilled their combined desire enough so that their senses might return. It fell lightly at first, pattering softly on the grass and the leaves of the copse of trees surrounding them. Had the slow, warm drizzle been maintained they might have made love there in the grass beneath the stars and the confirming light of the lovers moon but it did not. It grew steadily more heavy until they finally broke away from one another to breathe and regain their composure.
"Come. Let's go back," Shingen said, taking y/n's hand again and lifting it to kiss the back carefully. When his eyes trailed back up to hers, they were burning and the sight caused a shudder of desire to seize her. She didn't want to go back just yet. She wanted him to lay her down there in the grass and love her. She burned for his love. She could see his hands, and mouth, on her in her mind's eye and she nearly said as much, but she didn't. It was close, but the rain was beginning to pick up more and more and while the air was still warm, she was becoming quickly soaked.
Shingen read the run of thoughts on her face, in the lines of her body, in the heaving, glowing flesh of her chest. He very nearly gave her what she wanted and rain be damned but there was a distant flicker of lightning and so instead he began to jog back the way they had come with her hand in his.
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