Bright, still, moonlight forced its way around the jagged outlines of Maerin’s buildings. To Scythese’s eye it was as scorching and oppressive as the sun at the height of summer, creating delineated worlds of light and shadow side by side in the street. It distracted him. Everything seemed heightened that night. The wind rushed about him in waves that echoed those of the sea nearby and his footsteps, along with those of the one he followed reverberated through the streets like an army on the march. It all assaulted his senses, but none of it mattered.

It was the emptiness, the absence of the daily hustle and bustle of life, that made the street into an alien thing. At this hour, the intended purpose was impossible. The citizens tucked away in their houses might as well have been ghosts, forgotten and unseen.

He was heading towards the great wharf, or so he thought. Stellaphrena had not told him where they were going and he did not question. She walked quickly and with purpose and poise. Regal, like a queen inspecting her nighttime realm. Though she wore plain clothes, as always, the way her linen dress flew in the wind and shimmered in the moonlight made it seem like the finest of silk. The bronze buckles of her sandals glittered like gold and the leather band holding back her hair was a silver crown topped by gems of starlight.

Compared to her, he was a truly common man, wretched and ugly. Unworthy of her presence, though he basked in it with the devotion she was due. Following along, he felt like a hound brought to heel, but he did not resent her for it. It was a place of honor to be allowed so close.

They passed by the wharf and Scythese did not even notice. He fought a battle to keep his attention on the woman he followed, where it ought to be, and he was determined not to lose. Distractions were only chances for him to prove his loyalty.

When they arrived at the seaside where the pale sand met the tumultuous waves, he did not question it. Stellaphrena paused, then, beckoning for Scythese to follow with a hand doused in a moonbeam, walked into the water. He followed without question, soaking his sandaled feet in the freezing water for her.

Her simple dress, tied at shoulder, elbow, and wrist gave him a glimpse of muscled arms and shoulders, pale with moonlight. She led and he followed, grateful to tread the same footsteps as she even when they brought him pain. That too was a test, one that he would overcome.

They stood in the surf and broke the seafoam with their feet. Around them the rocks of Maerin’s coast jutted above the waves. The locals called them the teeth and invoked tales of old sea monsters to explain them. In the light of the moon, Scythese could understand why. They cast sharp shadows that squirmed in the sea’s wash like so many living things, tied on the spot but longing to be free.

Stellaphrena took his hands in hers, jolting him back to the moment, and gently pulled back the bandages that bound them. Beneath, through translucent skin miraculously healed over in the short time since she’d wrapped the bandages, tiny spots of light stared up at him.

Scythese let out a small gasp. As he moved his hands gingerly, those lights moved too, embedded deep beneath the skin between his thumb and forefinger. As they shifted, swimming beneath the skin like strange fish, his hands tingled with a strange energy, making them shake. He looked up to Stellaphrena, to those eyes, covered and hidden from him. He did not deserve to see them.

“Wh-what?” He could not speak clearly, but he sought answers and she would be the one to give them. She always had.

She let his hands go, leaving them hovering in the space between them, and, with sure fingers reached up to untie the veil that hid her eyes. Scythese’s entire body shook as she did. He had yearned for so long to see what she kept hidden beneath her veil. It consumed him. A hidden, shameful part of his soul that he kept at bay. Was he finally worthy? He could never be. Who could? Waves of cold and warm swept over him with an unbridled ecstasy that his body could scarcely take.

Her fingers came down, pulling with them that tiny strip of cloth that, for so long, had enticed him and kept him wanting. And he saw them. Eyes like no others. They glowed like two stars of her own, captured and stoked to outshine all the stars in the sky. Fitting, yes it was. Matched but oh so much more than the pinpricks that lit his own hands.

They took up all of his vision, blocking anything else. Such perfect beauty, far beyond what Scythese could ever have imagined. They outshone the moon to bring light to her skin. He was a pitiful thing graced to look upon the face of god; a worm given mercy by the boot and he revelled in that mercy.

He was drawn to them. He hardly noticed that he leaned forward, just to be closer. As he did, her hand came up to meet him, cupping his chin with cool fingers that set his skin pebbling with electric excitement. He was blessed to know her touch. It was the only thing that mattered. It granted him life, sight, sensation, thought. It became all that he was. There was no more Scythese of Sapho, only the experience of that touch, of that sight and the thought circling in his empty mind. He had been completed.

“We are not like the others,” She whispered, her voice blending with the wind and sounding all around him, like a chorus of voices. More than any one mouth could make, except for hers. “You and I, disciptor, we hold knowledge to free the world… and now, you have the capacity to. You and I, we have the means to make our vision finally come to be…”

Her breath washed over him and sang in his ears so sweet and so cold. He did not comprehend what she said, but his heart hurt with the desire to do as she said. To enact her vision, their vision. She shared it with him. He nodded fervently and was rewarded with a small smile, a compounded perfection on the perfection of her lips.

She pulled him closer. Her grip was so strong, but it did not hurt him. In that moment he did not think he could feel pain, perhaps he never would again. She had taken that away.

“We are strong, you and I, but we will need to be stronger…” Yes, they did. She was right, of course she was. “I need a champion, someone to lead my cause, someone who I trust…” Trust. She trusted him! How could he be so blessed? Years of dedication, of devotion, he had never expected this.

“Will you be my champion, disciptor?” She whispered. The words burrowed deep within him. He was no champion, but if she desired it, he would shape himself to be one. She would shape him, as she already had. It was her right to, for he belonged to her, wholly and without restraint. He had always been her creature and always would be.

“I will…” He breathed, his words hardly making a sound, but it brought him joy to see her smile widen. For something he had done.

“Very good…” He could not hear her voice over the wind, but the wind spoke for her. She commanded it like her own voice.

She closed the remaining inches between them, setting his skin aflame from the closeness. Every ounce of him was desire, desire for her, to do what she wished. Anything she wished.

Her lips touched his and fire became ice in an instant. She flowed through him, strong like the water that pummeled the shore, seeking his surrender. He offered it with no resistance, he had none to give. This was what he had always known he needed, even as he had kept it hidden. And now, whipped by the spray of the sea and chilled by the air, she plucked his dreams and returned them tenfold, graced by her touch and perfected, because only she could perfect them.

He gave himself over to her power. She held him and he no longer needed to stand, she kissed him and he no longer needed to breathe. He was a leaf upon the waves, taken where the sea willed. Far from home but given a new, heightened purpose in bearing witness to her.

When she did let him go and moved her hands to cup his cheeks, holding him just the tiniest, most painful distance away, he truly felt like he was floating on the water beneath him. He didn’t need to keep himself upright, but somehow he did. He didn’t need to pay any mind to anything besides her.

He wrapped his arms around her, rejoicing in the chance to hold her. He wished that he could catalogue every speck of himself in that moment. He wanted to store it, the euphoria that suffused him, for he would never feel it again. Unless she made it so.

Around them, the wind and sea spun into fierce little storms, coalescing in a multitude of images made of suspended droplets of water and bits of foam. The shapes of men and women, all enraptured by the strange couple that stood in the waves in their wild embrace. They watched silently with open mouths and limbs that twitched with the couple’s movement. With no one there to catch a glimpse of them, they watched the Lady of Stars and her chosen silently, a ghostly court to witness their queen.