Thread by @dontenchantme

#scaralumi //

he sees her standing alone in the moonlight.

her back faces him, a shadow silhouetted against the darker velvet of night—she’s so still that he wouldn’t have noticed her if he weren’t looking.

“traveller,” he says. he sees her head turn, just slightly.

but she doesn’t otherwise acknowledge him.

he steps forward, reaching towards the window. moonlight streams through the glass pane, and it turns his hand silver—transient and ethereal, a ghost walking among the living.

a description he finds a little more apt than he’d like.

“what are you doing awake?” she asks. her voice is soft, low, a whisper that blends into the night.

“couldn’t sleep,” he answers, glancing at her face. her features are shrouded in shadow, her golden eyes just barely visible.

she hums, a sound of understanding. “nightmares?”

“not really,” he lies, and she lets it go, moving her hand up to press against the glass.

her fingers are what catch his attention. slender and dainty, separated from him by a yawning infinity he doesn’t know how to cross—

but at the same time, so close. she’s only a step away.

“do you ever wonder?” she asks. “what you would do if you could turn back time.”

he scoffs, unable to help himself. all this time and he still can’t tamp down his instincts, born from decades and centuries of loneliness. “i don’t waste my time thinking about the impossible.”

another lie, but he doubts she’ll be able to tell. he’s spent too long lying to himself to be caught that easily.

she doesn’t reply immediately, but when she does, all his hackles rise. “you’re more like your mother than you think, wanderer.”

“watch your mouth.”

“why?” she asks. “because you’re afraid of hearing the truth?”

“because you, of all people, should know how it feels when people keep picking on scabs you thought healed.”

she tilts her head, removing her hand from the window. “i won’t apologise.”

“i didn’t expect you to.”

it’s strange, being able to tell the traveller that she’s wrong for once—he’s too used to playing the opposite side.

once upon a time, it’d have given him a sense of vindictive pleasure, knowing that he has the moral high ground, but this time…

he just feels empty.

vacant, a hole in his chest where his mother’s gnosis used to be.

he shouldn’t care. he doesn’t. he tells himself over and over that he doesn’t.

“you say you’ve let go of the past, but have you, really?”

he turns, leaning his back against the window. “you don’t trust me?”

“it’s not a matter of me trusting you or not.” she shrugs. “i’ve accepted your offer to travel with me, so if anything happens, that’s my burden to bear. i’m talking about you.”

the chill of night seeps into his thin shirt. he can feel tiny beads of condensation on the window.

“i’d like to believe i have,” he finally says, averting his face so he doesn’t have to acknowledge her—doesn’t have to imagine the look of pity that no doubts fills her expression. “i think to some extent, i have.”

“but it’s hard to forget the reason for your existence.”

she doesn’t say it like a question. it’s phrased like fact, and he bristles at the mere suggestion that she knows him. that she understands what he’s going through.

she doesn’t. centuries of existence and this is the first time she’s not had her brother by her side.

what does the traveller know of loneliness? of wandering the world, a discarded experiment, an existence so lowly his mother didn’t bother to remove the traces of him—

for what reason was he left to live? to try and stuff this void in his heart, to seek power and fulfilment and—

and love, even?

“you talk too much,” is all he says in response, and the traveller hums again, this time as though in assent.

they stand together at the window, studying the night sky, speckled with light. false stars and a false sky, but they bring people hope, nonetheless.

perhaps something doesn’t need to be real to have meaning. perhaps an existence like his, unnatural and unneeded—perhaps someone, somewhere, still has use for him.

every time he looked at lumine, he felt something within him break.

“good night,” he finally says.

she acknowledges him with a nod and a smile, a brief upturn of her lips, just a flicker in the moonlight.

he wonders what she’ll do if he leans in and kisses her. doesn’t act on the impulse and instead walks away, leaving her by the window.

his chest feels hollow, yet full at the same time. stuffed, uncomfortable with all these emotions he cannot name.

“lumine,” he says, testing her name, the way it rolls off his tongue. her name sounds like music.

he thinks he might like it.

- fin.