"You must be lonely."

The voice startled her, the sound of it as well-known as the descant of windchimes at her chamber door. Her hands twisted in her lap, and she did not yet turn her face from the broad window, from the cloudless nightsky beyond. The stars were hovering still and incandescent, something reassuring about their eternal distance. Easier, by far, to ache for something that you know you will never touch, rather than something flickering just out of reach.

He had come. It had been years; she was not sure he would.

And now that he was here, would she ask again?

Her motions unconsciously regal, she lifted a hand and inclined her head, briefly, formal indication that he was welcome to enter. The whisper of his sandals against the cool floor of her bedchamer was the only hint that he had moved, for the rippling windchimes were the solitary sound of the evening.

"Lonely?" she echoed, thoughtfully. She could feel, without looking, the tall warmth of him standing at her side, and found herself savoring his silence. How seldom her sages spoke to her, those ancient three. They never mentioned her shame, their wordlessness their support, a ponderous dry sort of silence. Perhaps it was a relief to talk now; or perhaps it was only her wishful imagination, that there might be something of empathy in the tone of his listening. "Sometimes. Only if I think on it. Besides, everyone is lonely."

He was not looking at her, both of them watching the spill of stars through the roundglass window. The two of them reflected within its transparent curve, she could see half his face by cast lamplight, splashes of shadow and brightness forming the familiar contours of his never-quite smile. "You're remembering them, aren't you."

A flash of anger, of reflexive self-defense, subsiding just as quickly. "Of course. Their memories are all I have."

"I was only wondering," he deferred, the tint of apology unmistakable to her careful ears, "if your memories fade, as ours do."

Ours, she heard, not yours. In your age and your long listening, you have grown... different. She bit her tongue, for she knew it was truth. She was not the same woman she had been, before the war and the loss and the years and years. Still, she struggled to find some comfort in the distance he was placing between them. "I've worked very hard to prevent that." He might have opened his mouth, but she anticipated his reprimand. "But as a result, of course, I live too much in the past."

Her guest shrugged, and she realized that his hair was tied back, for it did not bob and fall over his shoulder as it was wont to do when he nodded. "Yes, that is true of any of us." He matched her cadence with his own, deft as always with his words. "But, of course, it must be hard, losing your friends."

She let her eyes drift among the stars, let herself imagine for an instant that she was sitting on the ground-- feet bare in warm grass, a sun-blond head at her shoulder and a cinnamon-brown one at her knee, and three pairs of eyes cast dreamily up to the heavens. "I lost them, yes, but it was a very long time ago."

"Were you in love, Your Majesty?"

The double-image of her younger self fell away, memories surprised out of her mind. He had never asked her before, though a dozen times she thought he might. And a dozen times she had rehearsed the lie, wavering just beneath her heart, feeling the terrible lightness of her secret. Now, though, she just felt tired, and the admission was heavy and smooth off her tongue, like a long sigh. "I should think it was obvious."

"Ah." He did not sound as if he had particularly learned anything. Unexpectedly, he sat down next to her, there at the foot of her wide canopy bed. Taller than she, his weight dipped the mattress, and tilted her-- tiny as she was-- closer to him. Her gravity disturbed, she felt her self-control quavering, looked studiously at her hands. She took curious pride in their steadiness, laid sedately together in her lap. Until he spoke again, his voice balanced, painfully neutral. "How strange it must be for you, the two of them sleeping under your roof."

Always she had been good at following him, their quick minds jumping and twisting around each the other's train of thought. But this, this was a path she did not wish to tread, and he must have known it. "Yes," she said, allowing herself an edge of bitterness, her back stiffening. "He looks like him, you know-- Bartholomei does. Both of them have the resemblance, certainly, but the attitude and the golden complexion-- He could be his son..." To her dismay, her voice simply died, abandoning her to the silence.

His voice was unprecedented in its gentleness. "They are Anima compatible; the resonance is correct. We shall see."

Her eyes widened, small lips parted slightly. "What... did you say?"

He looked bemused. It was not often that they misheard one another, in the peculiar edifice of words that they had built together. "'We shall see'?" he repeated himself curiously, apparently wondering what she had thought he had said.

She laughed a little, cheeks staining in a gentle rush of embarrassment. "Oh. Oh. I thought-- I thought you called me Z."

The faint smile in his eyes reached his mouth, and he echoed her incredulously. "'Z?' Your Majesty--"

"Please," she interrupted him, not wanting to hear his protestations of politeness and respect, not now. Perhaps in the morning, she could see him on one reverent knee before her and her heart would not bleed. For the moment, though, she leaned up and caught at his hair with one deft petit hand, and made him look her in the eye. "They used to call me that, you know. The two of them." Belatedly, her fingers recognized the shape of his hair, dark and heavy at his back, wound into-- a simple braid.

For all that she had struggled to meet his eyes, her own gaze faltered, moving from his face to the starfields that were singing, ever silent, beyond the window. Her heartbeat felt hollow, her present self an echo of a younger memory. She whispered, "They were always... flirtatious."

Though his voice sounded far away, as if drifting to her across many years, she could not mistake the compassion of his tone. "The whole lot of them, flirtatious bastards. That much has not changed."

Her eyes closed--

--and her hand tightened involuntarily on his braid.

Her guest this evening made the smallest noise of understanding. "Forgive me, Your Majesty. I did not think when I braided my hair for sleep. I would not wish to make you... miss--"

Dream-touched, the thought surfaced, "How could I miss what I never had?" She was not even certain that she had spoken aloud, but he was silent for a long moment, and she supposed that she had.

Practical as always, his words traced the path of sound judgment and common sense that she had walked, long long ago. "If there had been no war, you would have married him in a political alliance, would you not?"

Could he not see that reason long ago had failed? "...Perhaps I would have," she did not look directly at him, trying to seem as if she had not thought of it, as if she had not wept for wanting it. "It was not to be."

"Those Fatimas," he began, painting sympathy with his words and lifting a hand to trace the outline of her small face, "were not meant to live in the air."

Unaware that she was leaning into his touch, she breathed, "No. No they were not."

His hands spelled reassurance, knuckles brushing against her pale cheeks, while his voice sought to bring her, all unwilling, back to the present. "But they have come back to you. Those two brothers-- it is them, you know."

She found herself floundering, floating weightless and unmoored in the sea of the sky. "Yes, yes I know," she said impatiently, trying to quell the rising tide of grief within her. "But it cannot be them, not when they look at me with no memories in their eyes. Nothing there for me." And it was too late, a line had been trespassed and a long unused floodgate was opening. She cried against his hands. "F-forgive me, friend--"

There were arms around her, offering strength, harbor. Not so arrogant as to refuse, she rested her face on his shoulder and wept. "Your Majesty, there is nothing to forgive." Damn him for the relief in his voice; had he provoked her to this? The momentary doubt flickered away, and she knew that he was not the one to be blamed if she were to break; she trusted him still, with all the myriad pieces of herself. The tears were not to be stopped, though, not for all the whispered assurances, the caress of his breath at her temple, the hands supporting her...

She regained her composure without even realizing it, lulled into quiet by the unexpected sweetness of his touch. "Forgive me," she said again, not withdrawing from the circle of his arms, and his hands remained, warm, at her back. "I do not remember the last time that I wept, for them."

"They have forgotten so much, Your Majesty." The compassion in his voice could not be merely her imagination, certainly the way he stroked her hair was more than simple loyalty. "Surely, something remains? You must have faith in them."

Suddenly, she was very conscious of their proximity, the softness of the bed beneath them, the protective line of his shoulder as he cradled her. "They have each other," she said, though the obvious attraction between the half-brothers was distinctly not foremost in her mind. "They do not need me. Nothing has changed." A light shiver danced up her spine as he held her. She let him define her, let the hardness of his hips and shoulderblades contradict her, complement her and her own small softness, convex and concave. He showed no signs of letting her go; her breath came a little hard. "Your hands-- so gentle."

He chuckled, and it washed through her, like an evening breeze through sun-warmed grass. "Comes of being a country doctor, I suppose."

"I feel like a little girl," she heard herself admitting, feeling ridiculous, there, with her head tucked under his chin, centuries-old and quivering in a man's arms. Still, it was not fear, and she thought her heart was quickening, widening, attempting to soak in the very sky.

Perhaps he felt the rhythm shifting, for the tenor of their silence changed and still he did not let go. "Yes," he said, slowly, and she dreamed his hands were no longer just rubbing her back but shaping her skin and touching her everywhere, everywhere-- "Yes, you do."

Something tremulous in his voice, something waited there beneath the accustomed simplicity of his words. It occurred to her, then, that that clamorous pulse in the night air might not only be her own. She lay her head against his heart for a moment, and thought, after all this time, that she might just dare. Her voice had never been the lightest kind, the sort for teasing and swift laughter; she was too aware of her weight to be Queen of the skies. But, her tiny fingers tapping playfully on his chest, keeping mock-time with his pulse, the room seemed giddy, dim and weightless. "Your heart is beating so quickly, friend," she murmured. "Why?"

His breath caught, and she knew he must have felt it too, that current between them. "Nothing... logical," he said, after a moment.

She gave a little sigh, measuring the time of his response, weighing his silence against his speech. "I am tired of logic," she pronounced, and thought for an instant that she might even mean it.

He chuckled again, and this time there was a definite undertone, rich and dark, again the promise of-- something. "You will have to pardon me then, Your Majesty, for I am nothing if not... logical." Again the pause, the heady heartbeat quiet and the counterpoint of windchimes. "You are perhaps the only one who truly knows what I am doing."

The trust, unmentioned, was deliciously heavy against her heart. "I surround myself with logic," she said, toying with the green fabric of his collar, feeling extravagant. "It is one of the few things left to me. ...Why are you here?"

"Because you sent for me." Sensible, as usual, and she was neither surprised nor offended, nestled there against his heartbeat.

She narrowed her eyes, and watched him do the same, allowing him to realize that the next question was the important one. She was an artist with questions, in a time when answers were a luxury, painting the air with her voice. "And why do you stay?"

He did not hesitate. "Because, as you said, everyone is lonely."

So evenly matched they were, him thus ready to respond, and with her own words. Still, she was caught off her guard, and realized her own small hands were splayed against his back, offering solace as it was offered to her. "Ah."

One shoulder lifted in a slight shrug, he bowed his head and spoke again, as if to himself. "Sometimes, and only if I think on it. I have so many lives that I do not even know which I am living at the moment." Too familiar, that shade of self-recrimination in his words; she had flavored her years with just such bitterness. She savored the feel of his voice against her hair; he spoke without looking at her. "I speak more to you than I do to my own wife." He laughed shortly, a mirthless sound.

Catching her breath, she did not allow herself to falter in her reply. "She is a benison to this society, a loyal subject." Another wedge between them, needlessly mentioned-- as if either of them were unaware of the other woman, three bedrooms away, hovering as they were miles above the earth. Yui was probably brushing out her hair and readying for sleep; they both knew her very well. The Queen would summon and his wife would nod and wait and he would-- well, he would walk between. Redundant in giving voice to their well-practiced symmetry, he seemed to revel in their distance tonight, and she could not tell why. The Queen of the skies twirled a curious finger along her guest's shoulderblade, only half-aware that she was doing so. "Shevat owes much to her."

"And if the Queen," he almost interrupted her, his words spilling over the wake of her last statement. "should perhaps require the company of her husband, she is more than willing to spare him, for an evening."

Her eyes widened, and she pulled back from him then, hearing that something that darkened his eyes, spelling out not only the whole of their friendship but his own unvoiced frustration. He had never brought it before her this way, never laid the dilemma bare and shivering before her. "Have you such a demanding Queen?" she asked, wondering if it was to be challenge, tonight, or if it perhaps it was going to be the end. That possibility made her falter, and she covered her mouth with a hand, antique gesture of acquiescence and dismay. "Do I... ask too much?"

He covered her hand with his own, fingertips brushing her cheek. For all the uncertainty in his voice a moment before, now there was only simple truth. "No, Your Majesty."

Tired of dancing words with him, she leaned her face into his touch and lowered her eyelashes. "I have a name, you know." It was a question, a half-buried ancient question, but there just the same.

He heard it, and understood, and in answer offered up her name. "...Zephyr." And childlike, she hid her face in his shirt, breathing him thirstily. He smelled of the surface, of grass and sunlit citrus trees, sweet heavy fruit.

Feeling evanescent, as if a breeze would lift and carry her away into the night, she closed her eyes and sought an anchor. "You of the many names," she whispered, hands quivering as she held to him. "What shall I call you?"

His voice was kind, as if she were as small a child as her stature supposed, and his touch as gentle. "I should think a Solarian name would taste sour in your mouth." His thumb brushed her bottom lip tenderly, and suddenly it was no longer the caress of a country doctor comforting his patient. Zephyr held her breath. "Well, it is my name here, but..." he said, sounding merely considering, though when she looked, his eyes were far too bright. " I have no lovers who call me Citan."

Invitation. Her blood sang like chimes struck by the first dawning wind. Partly obedient and partly daring, she tilted her head up towards his and mouthed, "Citan." So close to him, her lips brushed feather-whispers against his cheek, and she could feel his shiver.

Not moving, his mouth working in an effort not to smile, he turned her answer on its head, as if it were she who had extended the invitation and himself not the one breathless in anticipation of her response. "Yes?"

Such a smile she felt surfacing within her, warm from her very toes, lips tingling with it. He deserved no words in reply to that. Perhaps he knew it, knowing him, it was probably conscientiously done. And so she lifted her mouth to him silently, and kissed him.

And no matter the reaction she had been expecting, he answered in kind, lips meeting and parting and secrets shared, arms intertwining around each the other's shoulders, surrendering to the silence of one burning, searching kiss.

Breathless, her body arching into it, her eyes half-lidded, she murmured into his mouth, "Do I taste good?"

He kissed her again, and again, that as much his answer as the words whispered huskily against her collarbone. "Like the sky."

Perhaps seeking to learn something of need, her lips followed the path her exploring fingers had trailed, tasting the sweet heaviness of his skin, heady with the wonder of him. "Is everything-- so simple as this?"

"And as complicated," he said, sagely, his clever hands finding her even under all the royal trappings and layers of her sleeping clothes. "One man, and one woman." Something like a smirk happened underneath his tone, and she could feel his smile pressed against her chest. "Birds... make love in the air."

She could barely breathe, finding her skin singing beneath him. "Are you a bird?"

His words came in a rush, unspoken gratitude for someone who knew his truth. "By birth, Your Majesty."

He seemed so light, at that moment, upturned face with weightless, thankful smile, that she felt a flash of envy. "I have had to teach myself how to fly."

He found her mouth with his own, rich and bright above her. "And the sky is yours."

Lifting herself to meet him, they moved in it together, herself greedy for flight, and at the same time delirious with the perfect human heaviness of him above her, wanting at that moment nothing more than him.

His bangs trailed lightly against her face, his eyes half-closed, earnest yearning. "Would you-- remember me, Zephyr?"

"I could not forget," and she wept again, the Queen did, one hand playing with the braid that fell warm at his back, and whether she grieved for the past or longed for the present, even she could not tell. "I will burn your image-- in my memory--"

Riding on the cadence of their breathless motion, their words built and eddied around each other, silent urgent pleas rising in a crescendo, like a song of flight.

"That is all I can ask--" (Feel the slick seeking heat, the sweet weight of a lover.)

"--and keep you within me--" How I want a day that is not spent remembering--

"-- if you would remember me--" (Feel his knowing hands, touch, touching again.)

"--hold you inside me--" How I want to sleep without a dream of falling--

"--and carry me with you--" (Reach out with each other to a place in the sky.)

"--for as long as I-- live--" How I want-- you--

"--fly, Zephyr-- fly--" (And come together.)

All out of tears, she shivered at his shoulder and he held her, wordless then, their bedchamber spinning still and silent through the night.

Beyond them, unnoticed, a falling star glittered and died, testament to distance bridged in fire and the calamity of reunion.

and i will remember you
will you remember me?
don't let your life pass you by
weep not for the memories