Sparsile BC that is a very pretty word.
Her name was Charlaine, and he was under no circumstances to court her, by order of her parents. But they didn't care.
He found her in the courtyard, waiting. She was sad, and for a moment he didn't know why. Then she told him.
The words knocked the air out of him. Spots swam in front of his vision. "No," was the only word he could say.
Charlaine looked at the ground. "I'm sorry. I can't leave my family--and if I don't run away I can't fight them on this."
He felt he should have known. Humans left. They all left, in the end. It was just that usually they had the decency to do it by dying, not by choosing someone else.
He wasn't being fair, but he didn't really feel like being fair just then.
"Robin." Charlaine reached out for him.
He jerked away. "No." He shook his head. "Just--wait."
He frowned, trying to put thoughts in order. It was hard; he was shaken.
"I'm going to give you a ring first," he announced.
She blinked, trying to parse that out. "What?"
"A ring," he repeated. And without explaining it further, he reached up.
Human science says that stars are made of gas, and are purely physical phenomena. Human science is wrong about a lot of things. The heart of a star isn't gas; it's light. And Robin took that light from a faraway star and pulled it down, shaping it with his magic into a ring.
Charlaine looked like she might cry when he knelt. "You'll say yes to him," he said. "I know that. I won't be able to keep you. I know that. But let me give you this first."
She nodded, and slowly extended her hand. Robin slid the ring onto her finger.
She got married, as planned. She didn't look back, didn't come back to see him. She moved with her husband to another country. Some years later, he found the ring in a pawn shop.
