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“Hey, Moonlight,” Drifter says, running his bare hand through a patch of wild grass. “I think this place is my favorite so far.”
The field Eris weaves around them is vast, untamed, and smells of rich soil. It takes only seconds to unfurl into existence, a raw foundation of something larger. Drifter reclines in the overgrowth, watching Eris pace the open field with slow, careful steps.
She speaks without turning, but he hears the smile in her voice.
“You said that about the last one.”
Drifter rests an elbow against his knee, his posture lax. He plucks a stray blade of grass between his fingers, holds it up against the muted light, chuckles.
“Guess you keep finding ways to surprise me,” he says.
A gentle breeze ripples the sea of grass, warm and familiar.
It feels like the edge of the world. In some ways it is, Drifter thinks. Just a slice of paradise on the boundary of endless green fog. He looks up to the empty horizon and smiles.
He knows whatever Eris makes next will be something special.
She pulls down the bulk of her hood and takes a deep, grounding breath. Even from this distance, Drifter notices how her hair curls just around the peaks of her ears.
“What’s the plan?” he calls out to her.
“There is no plan,” Eris says, raising a hand towards the empty space in front of her. “Only possibility.”
He finds it fascinating to watch her work—her hands steady, the world beginning and ending at her fingertips. Everything woven together by the threads of her soul.
A tree hatches from the soil, branches twisting higher at Eris’s command. A step forward, the flick of her wrist. Leaves sprawl along the bark in unfamiliar shapes.
There were many things about Eris Morn that would never cease to amaze Drifter—her strength, her knowledge, her compassion. Watching her shape an entire world out of nothing seemed to pale in comparison. It was only scratching the surface.
He knows there had never been a place like this before, because there had never been anyone like her.
Eris glances over her shoulder. The glow of her eyes matches the sky, bright like the glint of a jade coin.
“Drifter.”
He blinks, the world coming back into focus. “Yeah?”
“Are you tired?” she asks.
Tired is not the right word. He feels well-rested, perhaps more than he ever really has. But now there’s a sense of calm running through his veins. No urge to check over his shoulder, no urge to run. The landscape itself feels like a security blanket. He swears he can feel her presence even when his eyes are closed. Wondrous and eternal.
“I’m alright, Moondust,” he says. He winks for emphasis, and she rolls her eyes with a subtle fondness.
He could sit here for hours, taking in the smell of leaves and aged paper. The whole place smells like an old library, but he’s kept the thought to himself. It’s pleasant in its oddity. It reminds him of her apartment, of her.
Eris is in the middle of fine-tuning her tree when he speaks up.
Softly, he asks, “Will you sit with me?”
A pause. He sees the change in her posture, her hands lowering. For a long moment, she watches him, and he only wishes he could know what she’s thinking.
She doesn’t speak when she strides towards him. The same determination from their first kiss burns in her eyes, hot, like the spark that ignites a wildfire. The thought has his chest seizing.
Eris smooths a hand over the fabric of her shirt and lowers herself beside him, knees tucked to her chest, her shoulder against his. He shifts slightly to help her settle into a divot in the grass.
Together they stare out into the undiscovered wonders of her soul.
“I quite like this one too,” she says after a moment. “My other rooms felt tailored. Fastidious.” Her chitinous brow furrows. “This is untamed and wild. Here, there is no right answer.”
Drifter ghosts his hand along the curve of her spine as she muses. She presses back, nearly imperceptible. He grows bolder, snaking his hand to rest just behind her shoulder, his fingers splayed wide.
He says, “I like wild.”
“I never would have known.” Eris settles against him comfortably.
“You really have to design all this by hand?” he asks.
“No,” she says. “Some of it is innate. There is a foundation. Pieces of a solid core I can build upon.”
She makes it sound so easy. Drifter squeezes her shoulder, and she presses closer. Warm winds caress his back.
“You think if you get angry it would all go south? Trees bursting into flames?”
Her smile finally cracks. “I command the landscape. The motions are conscious.”
He doesn’t doubt her for a second. Their trust is bone-deep.
“You should let me design a spot, you know. This place is infinite.”
“We are not making an arena for your Gambit games,” she deadpans.
“I’m serious!” he says, but he knows his tone is anything but. He can’t stop smiling. It’s a foreign, but not unwelcome, feeling.
“Tell me, then,” she begins, “your grand design.”
Drifter leans closer, holding out his other hand to trace invisible lines on the horizon. Eris narrows her eyes and watches.
“I’m thinking, a tavern right there,” he says, his thumb and index finger tilted. “Add a couple of workshops. Maybe a pool.“
“A pool,” she repeats.
“Yeah! But we might need some sunlight.” He points up. “Can you put a sun in here?”
Eris’s mouth twitches in a tempered laugh, just as another breeze rustles the field around them. Still warm.
“Anything is possible here,” she says, her head tilted up towards the foggy sky. “But I am uncertain about the implications of imagining an entire star.”
Drifter barks a laugh. “Not the whole thing! Just a little light, like,” he pinches his fingers together in front of his eye, “a speck.”
Eris side-eyes him, her smile simmering. “I will consider it.”
Before Drifter can think of what to say next, Eris reaches for the hand he has on her shoulder. Her touch is light, careful, her fingertips barely curling under his own. It’s easy without their armor. It’s so easy, it almost terrifies him.
You keep finding ways to surprise me.
“Anything else in your designated area?” she asks, now watching the horizon.
Drifter clears his throat. “Well…you had that garden on Io." He recalls her time investigating messages from the dark, their first meeting. Had it really been so long ago?
Beside him, Eris hums in response. She runs her other hand through the grass.
“Maybe we could start a new one?” Drifter asks, turning to look at her.
Oh. She was staring at him now.
She spoke quietly. “You would want that?”
If he could have a single place in the universe for anything he wanted, it wasn’t even a question—there would be a place for Eris Morn too. She had done the same for him, hadn’t she? Allowing him into the depths of her soul.
After all of her suffering, and after all of his, she had shared with him a place they could be free.
He answers immediately.
“Yes,” he says.
Eris kisses him before he can finish the word.
It’s sudden, their teeth clacking, the motion followed by a muted laugh. She reaches for the front of his shirt, balling her fist in the fabric. Drifter’s head spins. His hand slides against her jaw, his thumb brushing the line between chitin and flesh.
Together they sway, like the moon and the tide. Inseparable. The wind picks up again, brushing strands of her hair against his forehead.
He feels her smiling against his lips, and he thinks for a fleeting moment that he is the luckiest man to ever live. He can’t help but peek open an eye, wanting to savor her image. An insatiable man, she might call him, but it was true.
He catches a glimpse of her lashes. Then, a flicker of blue in the distance. Strange.
He pauses.
Eris’s grip against his collar loosens. She draws back, watching him, the glow of her eyes like crescent moons.
She asks, “What is it?”
“That flower,” Drifter says. “It wasn’t there before.”
He gestures behind her to a blue flower poking out of the tall grass—eight petals, pointed in pairs like a star. The design is unlike anything he’s seen before. It’s impossible to miss.
Eris opens her mouth, hesitates. The chitin around her eyes crinkles.
Drifter’s gaze flickers between her and the field, from green to blue and back again. He realizes something new in this moment, something that utterly floors him—Eris blushes with the tips of her ears.
He waits for her to speak.
“Oh,” is all she manages to say.
Another inconsistent breeze ripples through the field, like a kiss against Drifter’s skin. He glances at her unmoving hands. Her eyes are still locked on the flower. He remembers, the motions are conscious.
The pieces click into place. Their eyes meet. A beat of silence.
Then Drifter begins to laugh, boisterous and shameless. It echoes across the field like thunder.
“Oh, Moonlight,” he says between heavy breaths. “That’s—that’s the cutest damn thing I’ve ever seen.”
She stares back at him like he’s grown a third eye. “What are you talking about?”
“That flower grew,” he says, “because you kissed me.”
“What?”
He bites the inside of his cheek, willing his expression under control for her sake. “Unless you’re gonna tell me you commanded that flower to grow?”
He can almost see the thoughts swirling behind her eyes. First the wind, and now the flower. How many of her emotions would the landscape reveal?
Eris finally says, “No…I didn’t.”
A long moment passes, and the two of them look back at the mystery flower in unison.
“I know one way to find out for sure,” Drifter says, and he kisses her again.
He only catches the corner of her lips, her face still turned away. It’s a bold move and he knows it, but something about this place has his mind spinning. Something about it makes him want.
He breaks away with a grin. She smacks his shoulder with no real force.
“You impetuous man,” she says, but her smile betrays her.
Drifter catches the growth of a second flower out of the corner of his eye—this one green, with corkscrew petals and a golden center. His gambit paid off.
He exhales a laugh. “That settles that.”
Eris looks for a moment like she can’t decide between fascination or horror. It’s one of the things Drifter loves most about seeing her unveiled—she’s so expressive. He imagines how many times in the past she might have rolled her eyes behind that veil.
She looks at him again. “I would like to test something.”
Drifter nearly hesitates.
“Be my guest,” he says.
Eris lays a hand on Drifter’s chest, and it takes every ounce of his focus to hold still. He knows she can feel his heart beating through his ribs. He knows because her lip quirks the second before she leans forward.
It’s brief and feather-light. The explosive desire from earlier is replaced by something tame, careful.
Eris pulls away, and they both scan the field for any signs of new growth.
Nothing.
“Huh,” Drifter says.
Eris keeps a hand on his chest. “Perhaps there is a limit.”
It reminds him of their first time working together, of solving mysteries in unknown realms and asking forbidden questions. Piecing together the answers. It sparks a thrill in him, even now.
“Maybe you’re thinkin’ too hard,” he offers.
“Spontaneity.”
“Something like that.”
She looks back to him, and he does not miss the way her eyes flicker to his lips.
“I would like to know for sure,” she whispers.
His heart beats against his ribs, molten.
He raises a brow. “You’re asking me to kiss you?”
“I am asking you to surprise me,” she says.
It’s incredible, he thinks, how you can live for centuries and still be lost for words.
Drifter takes a breath.
He begins with a hand on her cheek, taking a moment just to look at her, really look at her. The last time he had the chance was during their reunion, but back then his thoughts were consumed by an overwhelming relief. Eris had looked at him then with care. She looks at him now with curiosity.
She holds still as he presses a kiss to her cheek, tenderly, against an old scar.
A flower blooms to her right, the petals wide and overlapping. He catches it out of the corner of his eye. Scarlet.
“One,” he says against her skin, smug.
His lips trail towards the curve of her jaw, just below her ear. He feels the chill of her tears, her warmth, the way she cranes her neck to the side to allow him space. His beard tickles her skin and a laugh catches in her throat.
The next flower is like starlight, luminant petals and a black stem.
“Two,” he says against her jaw.
She whispers, “Ridiculous romantic—“
He cups one side of her neck with his palm, his lips ghosting down. The wind feels like fingertips along his scalp. It lights his nerves on fire. Eris curls her hand against his chest.
It’s not a warning. It’s a tether.
Drifter laughs against her neck, which makes Eris laugh too, and then they’re both giggling against each other, more carefree he can ever remember being.
White blossoms grow where their bodies meet the earth. It reminds him of melting snow.
“And three,” he says, low.
She gently pushes him back by his shoulders, but he catches her little shiver. She studies the blossoms, trying to make sense of it. Like trying to make sense of herself.
“Well,” she begins, “it is an… unconventional way to plant a garden.”
To anyone else, she might look completely composed, but Drifter sees how her breath quickens, the glow of her eyes somehow brighter.
He lays a hand over hers. “How’d I do?”
“You are a showman,” she says. The tips of her ears are still rosey.
“That all?”
She adds, “And the epitome of greed.”
He laughs, leaning forward to nudge her foreheads together. He’s careful to avoid her third eye. The blossoms below them continue to spread, blooming outward in slow, spiraling patterns.
Eris lets out a stilted sigh, her adrenaline finally cracking through the surface.
“Thank you,” she says. She nods towards their clasped hands. “For sharing this with me.”
There are a million things he could say. He thinks one day he might, once his heart isn’t stuck in his throat.
“I always said I’d be here after,” he says instead. “For as long as you want me.”
He knows there are only two possibilities in that moment—either he says it, or Eris does.
They stare at each other like it’s a challenge, like the world around them was waiting for the words too. Her lips curve in a gentle smile, the wind around them echoing her breath. That warmth returns. It fills him like a fire.
Drifter takes a breath, begins to speak.
A giant leaf smacks him in the face.
It makes a pathetic little slapping sound against his cheek, jolting them both out of the moment. Drifter sputters, peels it away, holds it between his fingers until the breeze reclaims it. It disappears beyond the fog.
He looks back at Eris. Her lips are pressed tight.
Then she breaks into pure, unbridled laughter. Drifter’s eyes widen.
It’s the greatest sound in the world.
Eris pulls her hands free to cover her mouth, attempting to regain her composure. Her shoulders shake from the effort.
“Sorry,” she says, muffled. “I did not mean for that to—”
She trails off, her laughter stifled behind her hands. Drifter watches her, incredulous, his grin growing brighter. He commits the sound of her unkempt laughter to memory. He vows to hear it again. And again.
“Was that on purpose?” he asks.
She lowers her hands, her lips fighting a smile.
“No,” she says. “Though, it is a useful trick for the future.”
Drifter feigns offense, which only makes her laugh again. He loops his arms around her shoulders and pulls her closer in playful retaliation.
“Germaine!—”
He isn’t sure who goes first, but one moment they’re upright, the next they’re down in the grass.
He kisses her. He kisses her like he needs her to breathe. Eris laughs like bells, her hands tugging on his shirt. She pulls him impossibly close.
With every fervent press of his lips against her face, he shows what goes unspoken.
I love you. I love you. I love you.
Flickers of gold, purple, silver, jade.
Eris’s laughter rumbles in her chest like something alive, and Drifter kisses the corners of her neck and jaw until it fades into a low, contented sigh. Her hand coils at the nape of his neck, fingertips teasing strands of hair.
Then he feels something warm, something beyond just the heat of her hands or the winds.
Drifter pulls back to find Eris laying in his shadow, her eyes squinting against a harsh light behind him. He traces the source, turning to look at the sky.
From beyond the crest of jade fog, he spots it. A halo of gold, pure and potent as—
“Sunshine,” Eris breathes.
He holds a hand above his eyes for a better view. The sunlight is gentle. Not bright enough to hurt, but intense enough to bathe the field in hues of orange and yellow. Enough to warm his skin.
Drifter turns back, resting his hands in the grass beside Eris. She is looking at him again.
Again, he wonders what she’s thinking, what she sees when he looks at him. Her eyes glow in his shadow. She cradles his jaw with her fingertips, her expression enough to melt through to his core.
And she smiles like he’s something she’s been looking for her entire life.
Drifter swallows. “Guess you can make a sun.”
Eris traces his bottom lip with her thumb.
“Just a ‘speck,’” she whispers.
They laugh together as Eris pulls him back down into a tide of sunlit petals.