TW: Angst

Rythian had long since stopped trying to say he loved her.

Sometimes, he admitted, when time stood still and her eyes shown like the evening stars on a moonless night, he was tempted, but he never did. The words were taboo- bad things happened when they were spoken. And honestly, between the explosion of the servers and the destruction of Blackrock Stronghold, they'd both had enough of tempting fate.

For a long time they said the words were too clumsy, too flimsy to hold up to the complexity of their relationship. The feelings were communicated without saying anything at all.

In reality, this was a complete lie. They were just too scared to say the words; they brought them back to the darkest points in both their lives.

And for a while it was fine, or so they told themselves. Rythian would gaze at Zoey and smile softly, and it wouldn't need to be said. They knew, and that was enough.

But after a couple of months of that they found themselves wishing that they had a way to say the words. It was still too soon, still too fresh in their memories to really want to resort to saying anything out loud, but they both admitted that something was missing, some more permanent declaration of the way they felt. It was sometime after this conclusion was made that Zoey had an idea.

Rythian, Zoey knew, spoke a great many languages. Occasionally she'd hear him muttering in strange syllables that buzzed in her ears for hours after he'd finished speaking, and once or twice she'd seen him writing notes in ruins that slid and shimmered on the page like captured starlight. She liked to listen to him when he muttered to himself in these foreign tongues, enjoyed testing the words out in her mouth and tasting them on her lips. Of course she had no idea what she was saying, and she was sure her pronunciation was awful, but every sound tasted like honey and moonlight and magic, and she loved it.

So one day, when Rythian had just returned from Cabertown (or, more accurately, Rav's office where they'd probably just broken out the drinks and gone wild) and was drunk enough that Zoey knew he wouldn't remember anything she said, she asked him if there were any books about his languages in what they'd salvaged of his library. He'd thought about it for a little while then nodded a confirmation, listing off a few titles in a stumbling sort of way, then promptly fell asleep right on the ground. She wasn't overly worried; it wasn't the first time it'd happened. Ravs tended to go a bit overboard sometimes, as he was worried that Rythian worked too hard and was determined to make him loosen up.

Zoey headed towards the library, surprised at how many titles he'd given her. Actually, she was just plain amazed at the size of the library itself. Due to the rarity of some of the books he'd collected he'd put powerful magical wards on them, or so Rythian had told her when she'd asked. Even the nuke hadn't been able to destroy them.

She carefully pulled out a small stack of the books she'd been recommended and put them into her bag, then carried the whole thing over to her tent. There she sat reading long into the night, until the first glimpses of the sun found her toppled over on the pages, fast asleep.

It took her a long time, but eventually she began to understand more of what she was reading. She'd been right, it turned out: there was magic in the words of the old languages. The speaker had to embed a little into every sound they made. The books were written in stiff, awkward English, so formal that Zoey knew they probably had gone through more than one rough translation in their time. They were full of confusing instructions like, "pull the sound from the core of the Earth" and "speak this word softly, but not so softly that it sounds soft."

She struggled through thick volumes and dusty tomes that felt like she was the first to seriously read them since however long ago they'd been added to Rythian's collection.

And at last it paid off. Zoey found Rythian while he was working one morning and tapped him on the shoulder, smiling as she went.

He turned to look at her inquisitively. "Zoey? Are you alright? You look worried. Is there something I can do?

She took a deep breath, attempting to feel her inner magic as the book instructed, and mumbled, "Loivinia ameyet twita meani trittavera."

It was supposed to mean 'I love you my beautiful darling." Though it was nowhere near as beautiful as the flow of the original, in the words she heard some of the power, some of the magic she heard when they were said by Rythian.

There was shock on the mages face, and something else too- something that looked like loneliness and what she could tell was a deep longing for something long lost. To her immense shock he looked almost like he was about to cry.

"Oh gosh," she cried out in alarm, "was it that bad? Did I do something wrong? I'm so sorry!"

Rythian broke into her apologies by grabbing her into a desperate hug. He held her close. "Don't be sorry," he said into the top of her head, "don't ever think anything you do is bad. I just had a daydream that you said something that you couldn't possibly have said, that's all. I really do need to sleep."

Zoey pulled out of the hug to look him in the eye. "Lietta realatiavas. Lietta realatiavas ent loivinia ameyet."

You're awake, it meant, you're awake and I love you.

Rythian stared. "But how could you know that?" He whispered, shaking his head at her, "That's the language of a place far away."

Zoey smiled. "I taught myself, using the books in the library."

"The library?" he asked, still looking convinced he was dreaming, "I suppose if there was any place left to learn them, it'd be there. But no, that still doesn't answer when, or why, or anything."

"The when is simple," she replied, beginning to relax, "I've been dashing off to teach myself for a long time. The why is simple too, if you think about it. Your words are beautiful, they always have been, and we've needed a proper way to say things for a long time now. So I decided to learn to say them too."

Rythian closed his eyes. "Fair enough. It just, well, I guess it just surprised me to hear them spoken. They're not something that I've heard in much too long."

She cocked her head. "Why? Where are they from? I thought some of the books mentioned something about the dawn, but they never got into details."

"It's an ancient language of magic originating in the Realm of Dawn. The people there," His voice faltered, "the people there, the mages there, they're no longer able to use it. I'm the only fluent speaker left now."

"Well now there's two of us!" Zoey said, and she grinned. "You don't have to be alone with it anymore, which is good because aloneness is bad."

Rythian smiled. "Yes, it is. Aleonier corunde. Loneliness is in the heart. Your light shines the brightest there, though. Thank goodness for that."

He laughed then, the first she'd heard from him in a long time. It was a sound of happiness and pure life. He lifted her up and spun her in circle, letting loose a string of phrases that made Zoey's very core buzz with delight, that sang in her ear and filled her up with the tingle of unbridled magic. She'd never sound like that, she thought, so powerful and mysterious. The language was a dance between the speaker and the listener, and Rythian was a master.

But she tried her best. Her clear soprano intertwined with his words and for a moment, they really were dancing. If she stumbled he propped her back up and the dance continued. He was like an old virtuoso, one who'd been alone for so long he didn't care the skill of his partner, only that there was one.

Zoey found, after a while, that the words took on a life of their own. They pierced the air and bubbled up through her without her full intent. She realized what Rythian had been talking about; it was a language of magic, so old and so beautiful that it was a crime that there wasn't anyone around to speak it anymore.

From that point on it became their means of expression, what they used to speak to one another when they didn't want anyone else to hear. They had great fun laughing at Sjin and using words he didn't understand whenever they went to Xephos and Honeydew's parties, and calling Duncan things while he stared curiously back.

But most of all they used it to tell each other they loved them. Every conversation was a waltz that drew them closer and closer together, every word a secret they shared with each other. And when they would lay together at night and Rythian would whisper, "Loivinia ameyet." In her ear, Zoey realized that the ancient words had given them both hope to cling onto.

They never again let go.

Credit to onlyshipleftstanding on tumblr