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The warm breeze slid through her hair like fingers. It felt nice, very nice especially now that she was buzzed walking arm in arm with Imogen back to Orym’s childhood home, but it didn’t feel as nice as when Imogen did it. The day had been a much welcome reprieve after a successful but harrowing mission. All Laudna wanted to do was curl up beside her girlfriend, to dream of her, of them, of a distant hazy future where everything was right in the world, and they could live in peace—where they could build a home together and actually stay in one place long enough to enjoy it. She looked at Imogen who shot her a lopsided grin, eyes glazed but still focused on her with a burning intensity that sent electricity down her spine. The tether between them glowed bright and warm in her chest, Delilah be damned.
“Whatcha thinkin’ about?” Imogen asked, her voice low, her words bumping haphazardly into each other.
“My girlfriend,” she said simply, and snuck a quick kiss while the others were distractedly arguing about what Fearne should have stolen from the bar.
“You’re too sweet,” Imogen murmured. “I was thinkin’ about you too.”
Laudna took back her arm only so she could properly hold Imogen’s hand. When she gave it a gentle squeeze, she smiled as a faint glow emanated from the scars on her hand. If it wouldn’t have been so dark, if she wouldn’t have been so many shots deep, Laudna was sure if she looked at Imogen’s face, she would be able to see the delicate flush of pink spread high across her cheekbones and dusting the tips of her ears. Instead, she tilted her face up to look at the stars. The skies were wide and unrelenting here, and stars glittered like jewels above them. Though the ground beneath her feet felt a little unsteady, she felt it all slide into absolute clarity if only for a moment.
Life was short, even when it wasn’t. She was surrounded by her friends whose laughter seemed to resound in the night air like bells, and she was holding the hand of the woman she loved so immensely that it hurt to even try to describe how much she loved her. She would kiss Imogen goodnight, she would kiss her good morning, she would kiss her just because she could, and she knew it would be wholeheartedly returned. How delightful it was to see these fragments of life laid before her so clearly. In that moment, no one was trying to save the world, no one was bleeding or injured or unconscious or dead, no one was a hero, no one was making the tough decisions. They were just a group of friends who’d had too much to drink and now wandered home together to sleep it off. Tomorrow wouldn’t be like that, nor the next day. She couldn’t remember how long it’d been since they were just… them. Living, breathing… mostly… creatures who laughed, loved, enjoyed things. She felt light, and hope, a winged beast still somehow curling up in the deepest part of her heart, took to the proverbial skies. It flew up, up, up, and further still, disappearing in between the pinpricks of celestial light. Even if it all ended in the cold light of day, she had this to hold and to keep.
“You okay?” Imogen asked, swinging their held hands lightly. The rest of the group was still playfully shoving each other, not paying attention to the two women who’d stayed a couple of paces behind them.
“You know,” Laudna smiled at her, “I’m more than okay.”
She watched the lazy smile spread over Imogen’s face and kissed it once, twice, three times for good measure. It wasn’t enough to just be here; she wanted to memorize it all, catalogue it, file it all away in an archive to keep it protected. She wanted to consume it all until it became part of the very atoms that made her her. Alright, and she also wanted to kiss Imogen again, so she did.
“I love you a whole lot, you know,” Laudna told her.
“I love you a whole lot, y’know,” Imogen repeated back at her, brushing her lips against Laudna’s cool knuckles.
Could a heart burst with such affection? Was it a thing that was possible, to be so full of it that it caught fire and, wild, expanded until it exploded? If it was possible, she was sure she’d find out soon. Once they’d crossed that threshold in a more official capacity, all these extra intimacies she didn’t think she would ever have, least of all with someone like Imogen, swept her up in a current of exuberance. Laudna hadn’t even felt this alive when she was actually fully alive.
“Imogen?”
“Yeah, darlin’?”
“Dance with me a moment?” Laudna asked though she immediately felt foolish. There was no music, no dancefloor, and if their friends turned around, she was sure they would be teased mercilessly.
“You don’t even have to ask,” Imogen whispered, tugging her close and putting her other hand on Laudna’s waist.
There under the gorgeous skies of Zephrah amid the sounds of the Zephrahn night, two women danced together blushing and giggling, drunk on whatever they’d been drinking for the last hour at the bar and on each other. Laudna felt Imogen smile against the bare skin of her neck and reveled in the goosebumps that swept over her, Imogen humming tunelessly to try to keep them on some kind of rhythm and failing in a way that unsober people would ordinarily find hilarious. She found Imogen’s intensity, her dedication to creating an anchor memory for them, not just endearing but… Permanently lovely, unflinchingly genuine, and it warmed her all the way down to her toes. She scratched lightly at the nape of Imogen’s neck and delighted in the shivers that passed through Imogen. Together, they shared in the power of creation of a new unyielding mythology.
Two women who danced closely under the Zephrahn sky loved each other so immensely, there would be echoes of joy marked on the land. Not a scar but a laugh line. They would go on to change so much about Exandria, but that night, they were just two people in love walking home with their friends who all had a little too much to drink.
Just walking home together.
Hand in hand, bruised lips, and hearts filled to bursting.