(Hope you like the word I chose, though I couldn't really decide between stars and doors, that would have been cool as well)
thank you so much for the prompt! I enjoyed writing it a lot <3
Night paints the sky over the Osmium Court an umber shade, and the usual evening mist has subsided, allowing the light of eighteen moons to pierce through and flood the harbour with a gentle glow. Lying on the bottom of a moored boat they have climbed to watch the sky, Alloin draws invisible lines between the stars with her claw, mapping out constellations her father taught her. The sea is peaceful; it sways the boat gently, and there is almost no risk of waves suddenly tipping it and dragging them under to their deaths. The almost thrills her because she is young and daring, but she relishes the calmness of the ocean because she loves Menketh and would never put him in peril.
His arm is wrapped around her, sinewy and pale, and his eyes trace the movement of her finger against the canvas of the sky. They are like three glowing stars themselves – pallid blue, full of mysteries and silent as he is, observing the world like a chessboard and mapping the paths of the pieces. Alloin loves each one, and she turns to gaze into them for a long moment before summoning up the courage to speak.
“Tomorrow my father makes sail for Kaharn. And I am going with him.” She watches for any change on his face, but Menketh just nods slowly.
“Maybe when you return, I will have already finished my training.”
Alloin thinks about his thin fingers wrapped around the halberd’s shaft, of cold armouries with tall ceilings and narrow mesh windows. “I will miss you terribly.”
“And I will swing my edge ever so strongly so that it could cut through time and bring me a second closer to you.”
Twinkling stars reflect in his twinkling eyes and Alloin focuses all her senses to remember this image, to etch it in herself and wear like a memorabilium. She thinks of troubled seas and angry skies, of stormjoys and rains and Helium Drinkers raiding their shores every day. What if he is called to fight, his head weighted down by a helmet and the soft, unscaled shoulder blades scratching against heavy pauldrons?
“Every time you miss me,” Menketh says and rubs his cheek against hers, “Look up at the fifth moon and I will look up at it too. And our eyes will meet, reflected by the glow.”
She nuzzles up to his side. “I will bring you shells to embed in your armour.”
“And I will wear them because they will have come from you.”
The boat’s lazy swaying lulls Alloin into a state of lethargy, the curve of Menketh’s protruding ribs a familiar and comforting shape. She thinks about the orange ocean, vicious and merciless, and how it could sink their boat on a whim for no other reason than ill luck. She thinks about the Kaharn Atoll and wonders what if it is nothing like she imagined, what if her father’s stories were but beautiful linen draped over a corpse. Or what if it is better, more glorious than he would tell, what if it is the loveliest place she will ever see—what if she will die with the knowledge that such majesty exists, sprawled on the dark, jagged rocks of her Osmium home?
Menketh stirs beside her, readjusting his arm around her shoulders. One day they will never be parted again, Alloin thinks, when they are old enough to be wed, and he will serve in the palace guard and she will be sailing the seas and bringing home treasures and stories. She will go to the Kaharn Atoll and find out whether it is still magnificent and grand, whether the stars there truly sprinkle from the sky and coat the waves in effervescent, golden shimmer. And then, she thinks solemnly, she will take him there.
