The night we chose to stay
338 Words
The Valley of Virelume was silent once more.
The stars resumed their slow dance overhead, gentle and watchful. The Starlight Bloom had vanished—its purpose fulfilled—but its light still lingered in the air, a faint shimmer that danced on the edges of vision.
Liora leaned against Kael, still stunned by the warmth of his arms around her. It was real. He was solid. No magic collapsed at her touch. No soul vanished.
“I can feel your heartbeat,” she whispered, her hand resting on his chest.
Kael laughed softly, a sound that felt like sunlight through cold glass. “That makes two of us.”
She tilted her face up to him. “What now?”
He smiled down at her, brushing a lock of hair behind her ear. “Now we live.”
They returned to the Watcher’s Tower, no longer just a monument of solitude. Liora threw open the windows. She let wind rush through the halls, let moonlight paint her skin. She even descended to the village, hand in hand with Kael. The people stared, but this time not in fear. They saw a woman transformed. A woman whole.
The children, curious and unafraid, brought Kael flowers. He gave them names from the stars: Solielle, Nyra, Talon, Vire. They laughed and called him Skyborn.
In time, people asked Liora to read their futures in the stars. She declined.
“The stars are no longer my jailers,” she said. “They are my witness.”
As seasons passed, Kael built a garden where the Starlight Bloom had once stood. Nothing ever grew quite the same, but the earth was rich with memory. At night, they would lie beneath the heavens and whisper the stories of the stars they used to be—him made of fire, her made of waiting.
But the best story was the one they wrote together.
It began with a curse.
It ended with a kiss.
And in between, there was only light.
A kiss of starlight.
- Writer
